Hi,
I'm new to this board and a new breeder (only 3 spawns under my belt, but I'm hooked).

I love the mustard gas color, and thought the male plakat below was awesome. I am planning to breed him to his sister (they carry DT, too). If the babies turn out well, I would like to outcross one to one of my long tail copper babies (hoping for some halfmoons) to help strengthen the finnage.

Please critique them. I am still learning about how to assess form. I'd like to know what
I can do to improve.

TIA!

(female had a bite taken out of her anal fin, second pic of male is from the breeder)

I'm no expert by any stretch, but I'll share what little I know.

The female looks pretty good actually. Would be better with a HM spread, but the male has that so you should be OK.

The male looks great, good HM spread and nice dorsal, but has two minor problems. First he has a slight "spoon-head". (the dip above his eye) It's not so bad that I wouldn't breed him, but I would not breed any fry that might inherit it.

Second is that the "edge" rays of the caudle are shorter giving the tail a rounded appearance. Ideally the edge rays should be as long as the others giving the tail a "D" look. It's really, really hard to find a male with a perfect caudle on aquabid or anywhere else for that matter. Again, in the offspring I would select the fry with the longest edge rays to breed, to improve the caudle.

This pair should produce some nice offspring that will give you something to work with to improve the line. Just be selective when choosing the offspring to spawn. That's half the fun of breeding ...... working to get better and better quality bettas!!!

Female is more to a spoonhead than the male. I am worried that the offspring might have more spoonhead.
Both caudal edges are round. Body a bit short because they been cross into doubletail few times. The dorsal is best that stand out big and strong and it is over the caudal. Anal is nice but just a little bigger pointer. Ventral is good. Big and long. I would find a new female to breed.
Look for a singletail, not a spoon head and longer body to breed with him. Should be good. ;)

Not always so with Plakats. Show Plakats and Symmetrical Plakats yes, you do want that nice "D" shape with long leading edges, but in traditional plakats you look for the slightly rounded edges (spade tail is what the standards refer to it as), long tapering anal, fan like dorsal, and long ventrals.

I agree with what bettas4me and Yeevs said about the both of them. I think you have a good start to a bi-colored butterfly pattern. I would like to see an attempt made to breed the bodies one solid color, have that good bright "gold" color to contrast, and that lovely vivid steal blue it looks like they both have on the tips of their fins being the outer 50% of the butterfly pattern. That would be some awsome looking fish!

If you breed them to be bi-colored butterflies, you could enter them into variations with the description of "Bi-Color Butterfly Traditional Plakat". It would be really cool!

You're right Yeeves. I never noticed it I guess because it's more sweeping than the male's head. But laying a straightedge across her head shows that her's is actually worse than the male's.

According to the ibc standards, would a spoon head be a major or a minor fault? Even with the spoon heads they are gorgeous fish!

The male will loss slightly point but the female will lost more points. She is the more to a spoonhead than the male. :lolo: The spoonhead make the body form out of proportion. The more head look like been spank by a hammer (you know what I am talking. LOL) the worst it is. :OO

Hey, thanks everyone...great feedback and gives me food for thought. I haven't heard that term, spoon head (LOL), I was just calling her pin head...I still think she is cute! I'll be breeding them soon and I'll post pics of the fry, so you can help me select the best ones!

Since it's impossible to find plakats around here (I imported these guys), I'm going to try to work with them, see what I get-then consider getting a nicer plakat female...

An exert from chaper 5 of the IBC judging standards:

BODY FAULTS – ALL CLASSES
1. Body stout or slightly fat (slight fault).
2. Doubletail body too short or stout (slight fault).
3. Body moderately too small for finnage (minor fault).
4. Body does not show ideal shape – minor anomaly. (minor fault).
5. Body is “fat” or “skinny” (major fault).
6. Gill covers protrude outward when closed (major fault).
7. Body shows slight swayback or humpback (major fault).
8. Doubletail caudal peduncle bump or bend very noticeable (major fault).
9. Body shows excessive swayback or humpback (severe fault).

The underlined section is what applies here. What causes a fish to look "spoon headed" is that the body is humpbacked. If you take a straight egde and lay it on the top of the body right behind the dorsal to where the head is, you really see the humpbackedness. It's more noticable through the head because the dorsal is distracting the "narrow' area at the end of the body. You can also do this to a picture of a betta that doesn't have a "spoon head" and see that it is a gental curve, not a "hump".

And the general points for faults:

Slight: 3
Minor: 5
Major: 9
Severe: 17
Disqualifying Faults: DQ'ed or Moved to a different class

A judge can class a fault one higher or one lower in severity than stated, depending on how bad the fault is.