Betta changing colors

Question
Prue, Although I know I can not house these two together, I was merely following the advice of another expert on male bettas blowing bubbles.    You will be happy to know they are seperatly housed now and I am carefully monotoring the bubbles.  How will I know if the bubbles contain fry?  Am I new at this?  Oh yeah!  
Thanks Connie
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Followup To

Question -
I've had electric blue male betta for two wks and he was blowing bubbles. He seemed happy so got female- introduced them without incident and he changed body color to cream and fins to beautiful magenta.  He continues to change color according to his mood, but not entirely back to the beautiful blue he once was.  By the way the female is electric blue fined and blue black stripe body, nothing spectacular.

Please let me know if I should name my male LIZZARD?  Thanks Connie

Answer -
Dear Connie,

The changing colours of your betta are normal for these fish, particularly for marbled bettas. It sounds to me as though you simply have a marble on your hands - a perfectly normal colour variation. Lizzard would suit him perfectly. :)  

Although I am troubled by your saying: 'He seemed happy so got female- introduced them without incident' - it sounds as though you have put the female and male in the same tank! These fish (both genders) are highly aggressive. I know I may be jumping to the wrong conclusion, but female bettas SHOULD NOT be kept with males under any circumstances. Males cannot be kept with males or females, and females should only be kept with other females with extreme caution.

A male/female pair may get along now, but remember they are animals and do not have the same set of ethics that we do. While we would never dream of hurting our family, animals are not restricted by our values. People who keep males and females together almost always come home several weeks later to find both fish dead or dying.

Ripped fins, agony... death... I'm sure you don't want this for your fish.

If you are housing your male and female together, please relocate one of them to another tank - you'd definately be saving their life.

Thanks,

Prue  

Answer
Hi Connie,

That is a relief that you are not housing them together, and I am sorry that I overreacted a fair bit. You'd be surprised how many questions I get asking why their male betta has ripped up his 'girlfriend' just after they were getting along so well.

Bettas breed using bubblenests, as you already know. Once the male has a strong bubblenest ready, and the female is displaying vertical breeding stripes and is egg-laden, the male and female are carefully introduced and must be carefully watched. The egg-laden female is then embraced by the male and releases her eggs, which the male then fertilises and places in the nest.

He will then turn on the female to protect his new young, so she has to be removed ASAP. When that is done, the male tends the eggs which after several days appear as small black specks in the bubbles. The eggs soon hatch into as many as 300 baby betta fry!

I am not very experienced in breeding bettas, and unfortunately know little about the care of fry other than that it is hard work :P. But here is an excellent guide from Bettatalk.com on breeding. Hope it helps!

http://bettatalk.com/breeding_bettas.htm

Prue