Betta mandor
Betta mandor gets its name from the area where it lives - Mandoru District, West Kalimantan, Indonesia. These fish can usually be found in forest channels and marshes that are sometimes only a few centimeters deep. These places are usually in the shade of trees and heavily overgrown with aquatic vegetation. The water is often brownish in color due to humic acids and other substances produced by decomposing organic matter, and the substrate consists mainly of fallen leaves, branches and roots of trees.
Betta mandor has an elongated body. Males are more colorful, have wider unpaired fins, and are larger than females. The body coloration is dark. Just behind the head there are lateral bands of orange or red in males and golden in females. In general, the coloration of females is much paler than males. The maximum size of the fish is 5-6 cm.
Betta mandor preferably kept in a species aquarium or in a general aquarium with calm peaceful fish, singly or in pairs. The aquarium should be densely planted with a variety of plants, including floating. Requires free access from plants to the water surface, as fish breathe atmospheric air, and they periodically float to the surface of the water for a breath of air. For ease of maintenance, some aquarists do not use substrate and instead have ceramic pots and snags at the bottom. You can place dried oak leaves on the bottom. With the decomposition of leaves will develop a colony of microbes, which will serve as a valuable additional source of food for the fry.
Water parameters: temperature 22-27° C, hardness dH 1-5°, pH 4,0-6.5. Filtration should not be too strong. The aquarium should be covered with a lid. Fish are very sensitive to sharp fluctuations in water parameters and should never be started in aquariums where the biological equilibrium has not yet been established.
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Light is preferably low, so when selecting plants, you should consider this requirement and select shade-tolerant varieties.
The menu of Betta mandor in nature are insects, zooplankton and small invertebrates. Under aquarium conditions, fish eat a variety of dry food, as well as small live and frozen foods such as daphnia, artemia, moths, etc. try not to overfeed the fish, as they are prone to obesity.
Reproduction
To breed Betta mandor need a spawning tank, unless these fish are kept in a species aquarium.
The spawning tank should have a tightly closing lid (some aquarists use a tightly stretched film on top of the aquarium instead). This is necessary because the fry need warm moist air, without which the development of the labyrinth organ will be impaired.
In the process of courting the female, the male kind of wraps his body around her. At this time, the female hatches several eggs. The male immediately collects the eggs in his mouth and the cycle repeats until the female fully spawns.
The eggs are incubated in the mouth of the male for 8-14 days, after which he leaves the fully formed fry.
The fry can be transferred to another aquarium or left with their parents, in which case, as noted, they grow much faster.
Fry are fed micro worms, and artemia. Feed fry need 2-3 times a day.
The life expectancy of Betta mandor is 3-5 years.
