Feathertail HM spawn

Hi all!

My pair of feathertail HM's have finally spawned! Mars, the male, has been lazy with his nest making all week, so I thought I'd let Lily out the trap this lunchtime to inspire him. I checked on them a couple of hours later at 2:30pm and caught them wrapping, with some eggs already in the nest too! I had to leave to do a school run so I didn't get to see more than a minute of the action, but my other half watched and when I got home after 3pm they'd finished and Lily was hiding over the other side of the tank so I removed her. She seems fine, a few nips here and there.

I really hope Mars will blow more bubbles for the eggs before they hatch, because right now they're almost naked at the mo and I'm worried for them! The nest is made up of a few quite large bubbles, and he keeps rearranging the eggs. They seem quite secure at the mo, none are falling out. Has anyone had any experience with a spawn like this, with little to no nest? Will the eggs be OK? Some of them seem to just be hanging from the bubblewrap.

Anyway, the eggs could hatch anytime from early tomorrow afternoon, so I will update when things start happening. Please can you all keep your fingers crossed that Mars doesn't snap and start having a munching sesh!

Jess ^^

Below are piccies of the parents of this spawn. If anyone would like to give me a heads up on the possible fry colours (I'm thinking all red, LOL), that'd be great! Mars and Lily are a sibling pair and their parents were a purple and red feathertail HM, and a red rosetail HM.


Mars - He used to have a 'red devil' type black band around all his fins, but they seem to have paled out now. His scales are a bit iridescent and he has some white in him too.





Lily - She had greeny blue metallic colours in her and iridescent scales, she's very pretty.

Dibs on one of the babies! oooh how exciting, can't wait to see pics.

Just what I was gonna say lOL I love feathertails!

Thanks you guys! I just edited and updated this thread to sound less mad, I was SO crazy excited when I wrote it originally on my phone LOL.

Mars is now rearranging the eggs and keeping guard, occasionally doing a sweep of the tank floor to see if he's missed any. I forgot about the mad paranoia that comes with males being in the tank with eggs...constant silent prayers that he doesn't decide to have a buffet!

I'm glad to hear feathertails are popular, as they're quite rare and Mars is the only one I've ever seen in the flesh. I was a bit worried about doing an all red spawn, but Mars' feathery fins are SO attractive and gorgeous that I thought I'd have a go. I'm hoping some of the fry will have the metallic green that Lily has, it looks so fab.

I'm going to try taking some pics of the nest later on, as it's right at the front of the tank :-D

He is just stunning! I love him! And her, they are both gorgeous!!!

Thanks Mand! Mars looks so much better irl, pics don't do him justice. The sparkling white in his caudal only developed a few weeks back, and it's all so neat and handsome looking. Even his vents are feathered at the end ^^ It's so funny how the end of his vents are snow white - they look like he's wearing Micky Mouse style white gloves, LOL. Lily is such a sweetheart, and her colours are so metallic in the light. I think they'll make some fab little'uns *fingers crossed*.

Best of luck, i'm betting they will be STUNNING. Wish my FTHM had been more cooperative in the spawning tank little sod

the lack of bubbles may just be how your male does things... I've found the wild types especially will do that.. just a bunch of eggs and barely a bubble in sight.. the whole nest is less than an inch diameter

it's perfectly fine hun

Thanks hun, I did suspect maybe this was just the way he was going to be and he'd figure out a way. I tried a spawn with my OHM's and the same thing happened: they wrapped with hardly any nest. They put the eggs up there but the male got very frustrated and ended up eating the eggs that he'd put up on the leaf, lol.

What he's done now is blow some little bubbles all around the clump of eggs to keep them secure, although he moves them around alot which I know is normal. Just praying and praying I won't wake up tomorrow to an empty nest!

Fingers X'd for you and daddy-o

g'luck hun

Well I of course had a night full of fish dreams (all revolving around me somehow being clumsey and ruining the nest..sigh) and then I woke up and checked the nest. Nothing. Zip. One empty piece of bubblewrap. So head in hands for a sec I sniffed sadly, throwing an evil look at Mars through my fingers. Then I noticed he was hovering under a large piece of frogbit. So I looked under and guess what? He'd pulled over (I know..!) a large piece of frogbit right near the bubblewrap, blown lots of little bubbles under each leaf, then transferred all the eggs into the new nest. LOL. He's been a busy boy throughout the night!

So apologies to Mars for my evil eye look at him, when he was just making a new and improved home for his eggs. There don't seem to be loads of eggs in there but there never were from what I could see when they were in the bubblewrap. But some babies is better than no babies ^^ Here's hoping they hatch this afternoon and we get some feathertail wrigglers :-D

Old nest:



New nest:

Well done you, and well done mars, i must admit when i saw him on ebay i was tempted to buy him and when i bought my platinum pink, part dragon and red plakat boys i asked him about the red devil but he had sold unbeknown to me he was going to crop up again, at least he is being put to good use,

Hope you get a good spawn from him he is gorgeous and the female is as well,

Thanks Sarah, I also had been watching him for a while...couldn't resist that little puffball LOL. Darren's fish are doing us well I think!

Update: The eggs have been hatching for the last couple of hours, but I'm worrying my head off as Mars has eaten a fair amount of the eggs before they hatched, his belly is quite round. But he seems to be find about putting the falling babies/eggs with tails back into the nest without eating them. So I think maybe many of the eggs were fungusy or infertile (the female was slightly bigger than the male and they were awkward wrapping apparently) and he ate them. I won't relax til the fry are free-swimming and Mars is out the tank though. I really hope he won't eat the fry! There won't be loads in this spawn, from what I can see in the nest there's maybe 20 - 30 eggs at most but who knows, there might be more or less, they're so tiny lol.

Will keep you posted once I see proper hanging tails and fry, at the moment they're just eggs with little tails starting to unfurl. Yey for wrigglers!

Good luck with them, ive got all my fingers and toes crossed for you, hope he dosnt eat them, come on mars do ya mam proud

Be strong Mars - resist the tempting taste of your kids!

Thanks hun :-D

Well I feel guilty yet again for badmouthing Mars. Now the fry are unfurling and falling and wriggling back up, I can see a little more of where they are. And what's happened is Mars has three nests going, two pieces of frogbit quite close together, and he's remade some bubbles under the bubblewrap. So he spread the eggs out and now the fry are all spread out too..not too far apart but still he's having to check all three nests now, and he puts the fry back in different places to keep them moving. He's such a funny boy, but I'm relieved he *touch wood* doesn't seem to be munching on them. I've been watching him like a hawk for a while and he's replaced every fallen fry right back under one of his hot spots. The fry themselves seem very strong, many of the will swim back up if they fall without needing dad's help. Spike's fry took at least 24hours before they could do this themselves (lazy sods).

I forgot how amazingly exciting every stage of this is. I'd also forgotten how small they are when they hatch!!!!!!! I hope I don't have as many losses as I did in the first week, I know a few more things now that I didn't do right the first time ^^

Pics to follow when the fry are free swimming, I don't want to disturb Dad too much right now...don't want to do anything to make him snap LOL.

Aww exciting can't wait to see pics of these little ones. Daddy sounds great, but he's sure making things hard on himself by making 3 nests! Just out of curiosity, what temp are yours at and at how many hours did they hatch? I'm itching to see wrigglers

I'm beside myself with excitement for both of us, I love spawns that happen at the same time, it's like being in a birth club LOL. I have the temp at 29oc and both spawns started to hatch 24hours later, but it can take hours for the whole bunch to completely unfurl themselves. I think all of mine are now unfurled. The higher the temp the faster they hatch, but I've read that anything over 30oc can rush the eggs and make them hatch before they're properly developed.

Thanks hun! V helpful. Mine's at 28-29 so hopefully i'll start seeing something soon.

I bet you'll have a great chance of RT's and FT's in the spawn with both parents from FT's. Woo! Can't wait for when their fins start developing properly, will be so exciting!

LOL a birthing club your funny Jess...well done though another successful bunch of wrigglers

When does the 24hour mark come up for you Lou? This is soooo fun!! I probably won't be able to sleep now, I'm such a big fish-geek (my other half just called me that when I told him why I looked so excited and keep squeaking into my laptop).

28/29oc is perfect for fry I've found. When the're free swimming, I find they become a tiny bit less active below 28oc. Not scary or sickly or anything negative, 27oc is totally safe but they just seem more busy at 28/29oc in my experience, but I worry about boiling them but they seem happy at those temps, as do all my adults who I keep at 28oc.

PS. Thanks Nat, I joined birth clubs when I was preggo with the girls, but betta birth clubs are so much more exciting LOLOLOL.

4pm tomo will be about right methinks.

Ahhh so fun having lots of threads to look at it's amazing watching them grow up.. how're your CT's doing? I'm excited to see the colours you'll get seeing as the parents were so pretty

OK so from 4pm tomorrow, I'll be glued to the laptop waiting for updates, even though you won't be thinking about the internet as it's so hard to tear away from the tank!!!! I could easily spend all day watching my fish, especially the fry :-X

The CT's are doing fab *touch wood* I counted 31 today, and that was just visible!!!!!! I thought I only had about 28 now!! They're all getting bigger, and should be moving Spike Jr into his own 15L tank next week, and I'll start up a thread showing his weekly developement using pics. He should grow faster than the others on his own. I think all but a few will have red in them in varying degrees, there's only maybe 3 - 5 that are pale and possibly all yellow like Clover is. The other non-pale fry look very marbled, a white/pink marbling, some with a darker splash of red, some just light pink. I can't wait to see how they colour up. But I also can't wait to see how many DT's you get from your bunch, I wonder what the percentage will be?

Wow marble babies they all sound super cute. Will be keeping my beady eye on Spike Jr's thread, watching his development will be so cool. It;s amazing how many must pop out of the woodwork, I suppose a lot must hide in the plants and under IALs and stuff.

Yeah i'm really wondering about the DT's, i'm hoping I won't get too many long finned/ inbetweens from mixing up tail types (does that even apply to a HMPK and PK? confused.com! )