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just out o curiosity

other then betta splenders are their many if any other species to this genus and are they similar in behavior and looks:%)

Declan

There's quite a few different species of bettas. They're generally called "wild types." The bettas you see in the stores, with the long flowing fins and such, are the results of centuries of selective breeding. The original betta splendens has short fins and doesn't have anywhere near the variety of colors.

Here's a couple pages that give a list of bettas.

[link=The IBC Species Maintenance Program]http://www.ibc-smp.org/species/" style="COLOR: #00A0AE[/link]

[link=Betta List]http://www.geocities.com/kuchingensis/bettalist.html" style="COLOR: #00A0AE[/link]

I count 47 species and 9 undescribed species on the IBC page alone.

The problem with wild types is that they're somewhat rare and expensive. A few that I can think of that are somewhat more available are imbellis, smaragdina, coccina...

~Meow. Thus spoke the cat.~

Imbellis, Smaragdina and species Mahachai are the closest relatives, and are all able to be trained for fighting.

In general they are less aggressive than the current fancy splendens.

Wild splendens are also quite docile in comparison to the fancy ones.

For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. - Terry Pratchett

There are two distinct groups within the genus Betta - the bubblenesters and the mouthbrooders. These groups look very different from each other and behave differently as well.

The bubblenesters are generally smaller, around 2-3" long and have very small mouths. They also tend to inhabit slow moving or stagnant waters, and consequently are rather weak swimmers and cannot deal with a lot of current. The two most common species of Betta, B. splendens and B. imbellis, belong to this group.

The mouthbrooders, on the other hand, are pretty large fish at 4-5" long. They also have large mouths for raising young. Their large mouths also seems to make them more efficient predators than their bubblenesting counterparts, so don't keep them with small cardinal tetras (I learned this the hard way). This group of Betta tends to come from fast flowing creeks, and so they are fast-swimming, active fish that like a lot of current in their water.

Here is a picture of my 4.5" Betta pugnax female (a mouthbrooder).



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