About Us

As early as age 7 in Saigon, I successfully bred my first batch of Vietnamese fighter bettas.  Back then, 1977, veiltail bettas were a novelty.  Nowadays, even crowntails are starting to get old.  Although they are beautiful in their own rights, you can find crowntails in almost any pet stores.   Thankfully, continuous love for bettas by fanciers around the world continues to give us various bettas with varied colorations, patterns, and genetics.

Although bettas are territorial in nature and males are often loners, bettas are social fishes and needs courtship when it comes to breeding.   I started at age 7 talking to various old timers in our neighborhood who breed bettas on breeding style.  Some suggested feeding the females regularly and let her see the male 10 minutes each day for a week, until you can see the yellow eggs bulging in her body.  Others suggest cutting a small 1 cm hole in a divider and put it in between the male and female jars so they see each other once in a while. Regardless, I knew you had to let them see each other to excite their social behavior and initiate their courtship, but being careful not to over do it as they can get bored or used to each other. I proceeded to put them together and watched them very closely for hours in their countless coupling.  I remembered being very impressed of how the male, being so vicious, could be so graceful and gently with picking-up the eggs and tucked them under his bubble nest.  The old timers also told me to net the female out when she finish, although I did not believe them at first, questioning how could males take care of the babies better than females. After a few tries, I had baby bettas.  I remembered netting brineshrimp like "coa" (not brine shrimp) in various fresh water ponds to feed my babies.  My survival rates to adulthood were no more than 10%.

Fast forward to 2006, after escaping from Vietnam at the age of 9 on a 12 meter boat of 42 people, ended up as a refugee in Thailand for 2 years, immigrated to Canada, obtained my B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Canada and a Ph.D. in the US, I am now in Hawaii.  Due to life's various challenges over the years, I have not bred more bettas until recently.  When I was in Canada during the summer of 2005, I managed to find a very nice lady (Katherine Stuart) who happened to have some very nice bettas from Mr.   Preecha Ammara (betta expert extraordinaire and a nice person).   These beautiful bettas once again sparked my interests in breeding bettas again. Here in this site, I present some of these bettas I personally bred as a hobby and a renewed childhood love.   One of the things I am thankful for being in Hawaii is that the water is very clean and requires no chlorination; therefore, it is perfect for bettas.  In addition, there is lots of Indian almond here in Hawaii, and the dried leaves are a plus for healthy bettas.