For 2024 we will be making a weekly update post to keep our customers updated of planned breedings, upcoming fish, and any other tidbits we feel you might be interested in. This is the very first one. We will be trying to do this update on Saturday but from time to time it may be late just due to how things work out.

We are happy to announce that we will be returning to insulated coolers for shipping instead of hand cut Styrofoam in boxes. We feel this is a major upgrade for our customers, the fish, and us. Cutting out and manually prepping shipping boxes takes a significant amount of time which reduces how many fish we can pack and ship. This is no longer a concern. We are also thrilled to announce we will be using UPS as our primary shipping provider for 2024 with only a few exceptions.

We would also like to remind customers of our new rules for shipping:

• Before shipping we will check the weather for the week of shipping and if anytime during the 3 day period after the ship date the temperature will be over 90 degrees or under 40 degrees we will NOT ship your fish unless you chosen overnight shipping. If there is any sort of weather, military, national emergency, or natural disaster warning in the destination area or along the most likely route for the fish we will not ship fish to that area even if you have chosen overnight shipping. If the temperature on the route or at the final destination will be over 100 degrees or under 35 degrees we will NOT ship your fish even if you have chosen overnight shipping. Orders that will be delayed due to unsuitable conditions will be notified via email and given the option to chose from the next 2 shipping dates. If no reply is received the order will be shipped automatically on the next shipping date provided the unsuitable conditions have resolved.

This is a snippet of recent changes to our Terms of Sale. We suggest you read the entire Terms of Sale before purchasing to see all of the changes for 2024. We have also updated our Live Arrival Guarantee to make it a bit simpler.

Some changes are coming to our website over the next few weeks as we try to streamline the website to make it easier to see whats for sale. We are going to be adding a few features to make things easier for both us and our customers. The menus and landing page will be changed to make both navigating the site easier on mobile as well as browsing the fish for sale.

One of those changes include box size restrictions. The only issue with using insulated coolers to ship is that keeping multiple sizes takes alot of floor space as these boxes cannot be flattened for storage. To make everything from shipping calculations to storage simpler we will be moving to one single box size that will fit 99% of the orders made in the last 5 years. This means we have to limit the number of fish per order to what can fit into this box. To make that simpler we will be adding a box % calculator to the website that will show how  much space is left in the box as you add fish to your order. Once you have filled the box you will have to close out the order and start a new order with a new shipping fee as your order will now require a new shipping box. Our average customer will not be effected as the chosen box size can fit around 20-25 standard sized Betta.

In addition to this change we are making it easier to add fish to your open unshipped order. Orders will be able to have additional fish added throughout the week until 24 hours before the shipping date. If you have an open unshipped order and room in the box for that order you will be able to add fish to your order without contacting us for the normal $3 per additional fish rate.

This week we are removing the 8-9 week olds from Growout Tank A. These babies come from 4 different breedings. They have already started being listed but with over 150 babies from this tank we will not list them all at least not at once so not to overwhelm the site with Baby Betta. These guys have started to become aggressive toward each other and we are seeing more chasing so its just time to separate them. Separating them also allows them to have a quicker growth rate and not share food resources which is critical for the best growth and coloring. These babies are being moved to interim cups for the next 2-4 weeks depending on growth as they are still a bit small for tanks right now. We find that babies in this size range will often miss feedings when housed in larger tanks. This is one of a handful of times where we use cups anymore in our facility the other two times are for quarantining and treating.

The parents of the babies in Growout Tank A:

The majority of the babies from Growout Tank A are marble lines which means that while most are appearing blue at the moment there is a good chance they will develop the koi and avatar markings of their parents as they grow.

We plan to limit the site availability to around 125 max total fish at any one time. This is just due to the limited space available right now for holding tanks as well as the logistics of tracking specific fish for sale. We also do not want to website to take 3 years to load or for customers to get overwhelmed with too many similar choices. Once there is 125 fish listed on the website new fish will only be added once existing fish sell or when they are removed from sale which can happen anytime after they have been listed for 14 days.

For 2024 we will no longer be doing the tracking of spawns on the “Breeding Logs” type page. Rather we will only report on successful spawns and create their own spawn page for each successful spawn. Planned breedings will instead be put into this newsletter each week.

In the next 2 weeks babies from Growout Tank B will start becoming avaliable as some of htem are growing very fast and are getting close to sale size. Some already are sale size and most are showing the beautiful color markings of thier parents. This Growout has babies from 3 pairings. The majority of the babies are from a yellow koi to yellow koi spawn. We expect this pairing to produce primarily blue and white and yellow and blue marbling and we are already seeing quite a bit of that.

Parents of the babies in Growout Tank B:

We have a small incoming import of breeder fish coming next week. There are 20 fish hand selected by us for our breeding program in this order. We do not expect to send any to sales for a month or so but we will have some of our existing breeders retiring to sales in the next week or so. Including many of the parents listed above whose babies we have already grown out.

We have a few successful pairings over the last 2 weeks. These parents currently have spawns growing in out spawning tanks:

We also have started up Growout Tank C and begun moving babies into it. The babies listed above from the Black Copper HM have already migrated to this growout and the crowntail spawn will be moving there next week. The rest of the spawns from last week are destined for Growout Tank D which has not yet  been setup as they are about 2 weeks younger. We plan to set up D next week so that it will be cycled and ready for these babies in a couple weeks.

We have these pairs that we intend on breeding this week. One female, a yellow dragonscale, is not currently photoed and therefore not pictured here:

Here is a sneak peak at some of the sales fish coming next week: