Blackhead HMPK

Allow to share my nice Turquoise Iridescent Blackhead HMPK Male...

click pic to view higher resolution

Full Mask Steel Blue OHMPK

Another stunning piece from Martin Wong's line that I plan to inject into my masked HMPK lines:

 click pic to view higher resolution

Red Dragon HMPK Male breeders

As promised (in this post), here are some more Red Dragon HMPK (Halfmoon Plakat) breeders to share with you all.

click pic to view higher resolution

click pic to view higher resolution

Dusty Metallic Blood Dragon Male HMPK

This is a recent piece from one of my secret projects:

click pic to view higher resolution

This particular spawn was quite small, and they were hit by disease in the growout tank at around jarring age. So, there are around only 5 or less pieces from this spawn that are good enough to be sold or used as breeders.

Penang Flag Fancy Halfmoon Plakat

Couple of days ago, I just got a fancy HMPK from a fellow Malaysian breeder JL Betta from Teluk Intan -- My first fancy purchase, can you believe it! Some of his attributes attracted me to use him in one of my secret projects. Hmm.. you wonder what the secret project is, don't you? Well, lets just let it remain a secret, and don't let your curiosity kill the cat AND yourself, okay? Ha Ha! :D

At the moment, this fancy has very decent color contrast. Lets hope it stays that way as he ages...

 

click pic to view higher resolution

We can see three main colors on this fish: blue, white and yellow. Coincidently, these are also the colors of the Penang flag, and hence the name "Penang Flag Fancy"... Oh boy, I'm really creative, aren't I?

Recent decent result: my Gold Halfmoon project

I've been working on producing quality Gold HMs for quite some time now (1.5 years). Wasn't that easy and straightforward. I couldn't get any quality gold females as I could not find a breeder who would release any, so I sorta have to start from scratch. The whole project was also quite time consuming as well, for I took time to observe from my own fishes and results to understand gold genetics better. Several lines have been created, some discontinued, and many pieces were involved as breeders.

At last I started to see some decent results in this batch (tho its still a long journey towards achieving top-class gold halfmoons). As I intend not to display nor sell any pieces from this batch, I let the fish grow in the growout tank and they were jarred pretty late. As a result of that, the males have bent rays and uneven color/metalllic shine at the fin edges. However, I'm not really too concerned about this, as it will not effect the genetic of the males if used as breeders. Been chatting with a fellow hobbyist who requested to see some of my latest results from my Gold HM line. So, I indentified a breeder piece and snapped away:

click pic to view higher resolution

DTHM Gold Female

This is a DTHM (Double Tail Halfmoon) female that I've produced in one of my Gold HM lines. Wasn't really expecting DTs in this spawn, as I did not expect the father to be a DT geno, like their mother. The finnage on this piece is not good for a HM, but I might just "borrow" her DT trait and decent colouration to continue the line.

click pic to view higher resolution

For the Gold HMs lines that I'm currently working on, I started off by using good Gold HM males and Gold plakat females. It was difficult enough to find good Gold HM males, but even harder to find Gold HM females. Surprisingly, I found out that the males that I managed to get my hands on are plakat carriers! That would explain why it is so rare to see an excellent Gold HM in terms of color intensity, metallic shine, body and finnage. But this challenge certainly makes my project even more mouth-watering. Previous spawns were still not up to expectations. It was either color or finnage that was the problem. Finally, in this batch I see a few promising females tho they are still far from being ideal females for breeding. Well, I'm in no hurry to achieve my aim of one day producing superb Gold HMs, but I'm happy that at least results show I'm in the right direction... :)

Red Dragon HMPK Breeders

Here are two pieces that I will be using as breeders to continue my Red Dragon HMPK (Halfmoon Plakad) line...

click pic to view higher resolution

click pic to view higher resolution

There are other pieces that I will be using as breeders to strengthen this Red Dragon Plakad line, and I hope to show them here later... :)

Full Mask Turquoise OHMPK

Recently also helped Jit and fellow Malaysian breeder, Martin Wong, to sell one of the latter's fish. Martin, as Malaysian breeders know consistently produces world class show grade bettas.

Here's a piece that I help took pictures of and sold.

 click pic to view higher resolution

Another recent Super Red from Jit

Here's recent update from Jit Sin's Super Red line. For a Jit Sin Super Red plakat, this fish a bit smallish, cause 'somebody' was a bit too busy to pump up this batch properly... Normally the size for this line is very good, much larger than the size of an average plakat. Many people who sees the size of plakats from this line would ask if it was a giant, or if it was a (so-called) giant geno.

I particularly like the finnage on this male, especially his big caudal. Colour is excellent with very minimal black wash and irids..

 click pic to view higher resolution

Jit's recent Super Red and Black Dragon updates

Friend and breeder, Jit Sin have been keeping his Super Red HMPK and Black Dragon HMPK lines for several years now. And as we can all see, they have reached very high standards. Here are some photos that I took of his most recent fishes from the lines.

 

 click pic to view higher resolution

 click pic to view higher resolution

Update: Recent Gold HMPK Results Part 3

More updates from my recent intense gold HMPK batch. These guys are also sold, and Male 5 was sold at a record price for me in an auction.

click pic to view higher resolution

 click pic to view higher resolution