CS-11: The Origin of the Marble Betta - International Betta Congress

Date: Unknown
CS-11
Don't overlook the fact that this entire lineage was that of standard black, also known as
melano, and carried the lethal gene. Whenever line breeding was used, you wound up with
fungused eggs. There was a brick wall. You had to take one or two steps backward, as it were,
to go one step forward.
At the 1970 IBC convention held in Cincinnati, Ohio, a wonder appeared. It wasn't at the
show, but in the fish room of a guy named Jean Roche. I was unable to obtain any of the
particular fish from him, but Gene Lucas did get some. I owe it to Gene Lucas (as we all do) that
fertile blacks were propagated. I don't know who else may have bred them, but I had thousands.
These fish were different from the regular standard blacks in that black fish could be
bred to black fish, and by gosh, you got black fish. Usually. Some of them were speckled with
black and otherwise were white (fish flesh colored). These I immediately tagged "marble."
Others had a greater amount of black on the body and fins but had white heads, and I named
them "piebald." I swear to this day that until those fish put in an appearance, I had never heard
the terms marble or piebald applied to Bettas.
Now another thing happened. At the auction of another IBC international convention, I
purchased the only fish I have ever bought at an auction. It was a male Indonesian fish with
green and yellow fins. It also had a very unique feature- a double caudal. Gene Lucas allowed
me to out bid him on this fish in the way that Gene is able to do. I blew a whole five-dollar bill on
the first non-red double tail male Betta this country had ever seen. Gene knew immediately what
it was, and he let me have it. I owe Gene Lucas many things, and this is one of them. (Although
I'll never forgive him for requesting red Bettas that were really red, and me sending them to him
by the dozen only to find out years later that he was boiling them to get red pigment.)
Now I had another cornerstone. Not wasting time, that non-red, green doubletail was
bred to the fertile black strain. It began to save a lot of time when your first mating produced
what you wanted in plain view. I got doubletailed blacks and doubletailed whites within two
generations, and then it was just a matter of cleaning them up of iridocytes. There never was
any red, and if there was, it was eliminated by the non-red gene with the doubletailed
Indonesian obviously displayed.
Now let's go back to several questions that have recently popped up. To differentiate
between a black lace Betta and a melano black with the opaque factor, we look at them. That
will probably not satisfy you, but that is all you would need to do.
The standard black which carried the lethal gene did not have any of the lacy
appearance of the later fertile black which, on the other hand, almost always displayed that
characteristic. The black of the standard black was usually an even gradation of the black
coloration. The fertile black seemed to have rectangular specks of black on clearer fin material.
Basically, the standard black was smoked evenly, and the fertile black had a lace-like
appearance.
Retyped from original article on 01/22/02 by the Page Family
Public Relations Committee ~ technical assistance library ~ retyping team
Original document date ~ Unknown
Illustrations ~ None
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