Betta fighting is still popular in rural Thailand. There are many
"arenas" for it [outsiders are not welcome] and people can go to great
length to find a spot that is supposed to have wild betta with good
fighting ability. My friend told me about someone in Ubon close to
Mekong river went all the way down to Chonburi area to get wildtype
betta, and Mahachai people told me some of them go down to Nakorn
srithammarat down south to catch good wild fighter. BTW there are
separate arenas for fighting-form betta and wildtype betta.
Though Mahachai betta's range seems small other bettas such as Betta
simplex also has small range.
Tony
anutej_at_loxinfo.co.th
p.s. Have you spawn Northern studfish before?
Steffen Hellner wrote:
>
> Interesting information.
>
> How far is the next splendens resp. imbellis off the Mahachai?
>
> >From my oppinion, every Betta from at least 30 km around any settlement is
> suspect to be intergraded by domestic fish/fighters.
>
> Steffen
>
> > Von: anutej_at_loxinfo.co.th
> > Antworten an: nanfa_at_aquaria.net
> > Datum: Thu, 18 Sep 2003 18:11:39 +0700
> > An: nanfa_at_aquaria.net
> > Betreff: Re: NANFA-- Bluenose shiner news [off topic]
> >
> > It is interesting that so far there is no splendens found by me
> > and friends in Betta sp. mahachai habitat. Some populations of
> > wildtype splendens and wild imbellis can tolerate salt since they can
> > be found in brackish water habitat too, so something must be going on
> > for Mahachai betta to be the only betta species/variety in its
> > habitat.
> >
> > Other interesting point is that local betta arena breeder gurus
> > in Mahachai area seem to differentiate Mahachai betta and wildtype
> > splendens well. They call Mahachai betta "Pla par" [that means
> > "forest fish"] or "luk par" since they are generally found in Jak
> > forest [Jak is a type of palm-like plant that like barckish water] or
> > "Pla kiew" [= green fish], and call wildtype splendens "Pla rong",
> > "Pla tung" or "Luk rong" [[generally mean "ditch or field fish" since
> > they are found in canals, ditches, and fields generally further north]
> > or "Pla daeng" [= red fish]. They seems not to differentiate between
> > the wild imbellis from the south from wildtype splendens from the
> > north [they do say that fish from specific location is better at
> > fighting than others, but not restrict to species] since they refers
> > to both as "Pla daeng". They seem to use this knowledge to cross
> > Mahachai [Pla kiew] with wild splendens [Pla daeng] or fighting form
> > splendens to create faked Mahachai to fool careless arena opponents
> > [using stronger hybrid against real wild Pla kiew ^_^].
> > Tony
> > anutej_at_loxinfo.co.th
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