Ok, I have 3 pair of reds. I have to decide which two are the best, but don't feel confident doing it alone. I can spot things in each that I know aren't ideal. I need someone to tell me what is bad and good about each one and which faults are the lesser of the evils when breeding.

Please be specific. I won't be upset if you say this is bad etc. etc. I would like to know the good points on them as well. But mostly which male and which female I should use together. They are all 6 siblings. Doubletail geno.

Sorry the pics aren't better. I only had a scratched plastic tank for picture taking right now.

Here is male #1 He wouldn't really flare for me...



And another that is lighter...

Here is male #3, (they are out of order I know...) none of the pics are great.
The clear space near the top of his caudal has fin there but it is clear.

mostly fins in this pic


Caudal again :( he wouldn't cooperate)


This one is a bit more side-to


This one is real dark, but otherwise was the best one I got so I threw it in.

ok last of the males. These pics aren't great either. He didn't want to flare, and I lost my daylight from the window. But he did hold more still, so I have more pics of him...

This is female #3. I think she has a problem with that right gill cover, and she seems to have a tiny mouth or something that prevents her from eating anything but the smallest (Atison's pellets) whole. All the others eat them whole in one gulp. She has to grab them and spit them out several times before they go all the way into her mouth...
She has the cleanest colored body of them all.



Here is here tail close up

Are all the bettas same siblings? ^_^ It's look like it.

The first red male you can drop him off from breeding plan. The head as you can see is not the type for breeding potential.
So left the bottom two. Both do has black spots in their scales. Therefore you do need a cleaner female to breed with. I think the last male are much better than the second one because of the color. I can see the second one do have some marble gene as can see the caudal tail have some marble spot.
As for form, in the picture, the second male stand out more than the third. But for breeding, since they are sibling, I go with the third male first.
I really hope you can choose again the new off spring to sellect better juvies to cross again.
I really like to see more longer fins with straight edge caudal females in your new batch. :)

Here is female #1. She mostly was turning when I got the pics...







This is the best one I have of her caudal

You can breed this red marble female to the second slightly mred marble male for sure. ^_^

Last girl female #2.



and her tail

I will choosing the third male and third female to breed. The last female has more rays and longer body. Hopefully you will get a cleaner frys next batch. ^_^ First female can be breed too with the third male.

I'm going through the pictures as shown.

Pic of male 1: Alot of shovel head going on, looks like if he would actually flair that he'd have nice finnage.

Pic of male 2: Really light bodied, that clear spot in his tail looks like some one/him could have nipped it and it grew back? Has some black spotting through the body.

Pic of male 3: Has the best color of all three males, BUT also has the most amount of black.

All three males look like they would have decent spreads if flaired, and I am going to tentatively say that from what I see in the pictures that they either don't have rounded edges to their caudals, or if they do, it is the very first ray that is short and it is minimal.

Female pic 1: Pretty clean body. Needs more in the finnage department. Only has two spots on her rays where she branches, and in total, one ray only splits into 4.


Female pic 2: Pretty clean bodied yet again, coloration is a little better, a little darker. Has a MUCH better caudal, though by the looks of her caudal I wouldn't be surprized that any of these guys might carry some butterfly/marble, and might throw some butterfly/marble in the spawning. She has more branching, and earlier branching than that of the first female. It is hard to really count because her tail is half clear, but she has 3 sections of branching, and 6-8 rays off of one origional ray.


I would try the second female you posted to the third male that you posted, and the forst female to the second male that was posted. Or visa versa. In the end it is your decision. But I would mainly concentrait on those two pairs, keeping the first male as backup.

I would choose the third female because she is not marble geno and also I can see her third section branching is starting to form. I can tell this female and the first one are smaller and younger than the second female.

I like the one you call Male #3, which is the second set of pics.
He is cleaner then the third set of pics, and seems to have beter carrage.
Also, people that know me know I have this thing about over long anal fins, and to me, the second set of pics, that male has a better over all form. The third male seems to have a longer anal fin. His dorsal also looks skimpier.
Either the second or third set of pics for the first male for breeding.
The first male does look to have that shovelhead thing going on, though he has a thicker body than the other two males.
That could be because of the DT breeding, but I would hold him as a back up male, just in case the others don't work out.
As for females..
Number 1 and number 2, which are the second and third set of pics.
Though number 3 (first set) has the cleaner color, her ray count is smaller, and more random, her tail is also the more rounded of the three.
Number 1 (second set) also seems to have a random ray thing going on, but not as much. But she also looks to have the straightest edges of the thre females. Her anal fin also looks to be the most elongated.
Number 2 (third set) has the most even ray count, being mostly 4 ray throughout her tail. She looks to be a bit more rounded edged that the female in the second set. Though she has some nippage, I think her anal fin might be better balanced.
She also looks to have the better dorsal of the three females, though I prefer the body of the number 1 (second set) more, I think over all the last female (number 2) is the better over all female.

Yes they are all siblings.
Thanks everyone who has given their opinion so far!

I also thought the first had too much shovelhead, and figured he wouldn't be good for breeding. He is going to family as a pet.

Keep chiming in everyone. My pictures aren't so good, I'll take the comments and check the fish. If I get better pics I may post them again sometime in the next month.

Any specific pics I should try to get, let me know.

If you can get the male flare, that will be good especially the second and third males. How big are the three females? Are they all same size and same sibling? ^_^

Yeeves, they are all siblings. The one female with the tiny mouth #3. Is smaller than the others, probably about 1 1/4 inches. The other two are larger and are about 2 inches long.

I don't know if they are from the exact same spawn or not. Breeder didn't say. He only said they all carry DT. and are from the line of whoever swept 2002 IBC convention...I don't even know who that was.

I will try to get the males to flare, they were giving me fits yesterday. Uncooperative. Never had ones that didn't flare at each other right away!

I love the last male. He looks more pinkish than the other 2.