Blue and green Betta fish

Once upon a time bettas were all brownish uneventful little fishies... But those days are looong gone! The original wild bettas were mainly unimpressive with shades of grayish greenish brown, and the iridescent colors (blue and green) which we love so much on bettas, were limited to only a few spots here and there. Now bettas come in almost every color you can possibly imagine! And even some you can't!! :) Because of the intensive genetic manipulation bettas have been subjected to, many many betta colors have been created. In fact, too many to cover them all on this page.

So many betta colors, so little time and space :)! Bettas are in technicolor ;), every imaginable color combo, even in two colors (bi-colors), and bettas displaying intricate patterns such as the beautiful butterflies or the marbles or even the piebalds.

The International Betta Congress has it's own classifications, but for now I will not cover that and will simply go over the main current betta color variations, sorted in a way that makes sense to me, and hopefully will make sense to you too :).

u Solid colors

These are bettas that are one color, meaning the body and the fins are the same color. ideally solid color bettas should not have any other colors present (also called "impurities". However, in the real world (yeah, come back from lala land please LOL) most bettas have impurities, it is just that some show them more than others. ideally you want to get stock as clean as possible. I proud myself in offering a large amount of very pure colored fish here. These are hard to produce and hard to find. bettas with heavier impurities I consider culls and will not sell. For example, a blue bettas should have no red in the fins. An opaque bettas should not have red washes (although that is a very common problem and very clean opaques are very hard to produce and find). A reed bettas should not have green or blue iridescence on its body. Etc etc... And so forth and so on. So what are the main solid colors choices?

	cellophane: basically has no color. Fins are translucent and body is flesh. The flesh color is due to the fact that one can see the tissues and organs which are flesh colored. The skin itself does not have any pigments.
	white opaque: this color was created by Dr. Gene Lucas, who played around with several genes until the first solid white betta came to be. Most opaques tend to have impurities and very clean opaques, like the male on the left (Holy Grail) are very hard to produce.
	yellow: also known as "non-red" all yellows also carry one of the three iridescent color (steel, royal or green).
	orange: this strain was first created by Gilbert Limhengco and is one of the latest new solid colors. Oranges are a bit more red than what an orange would look like, maybe more like a dark tangerine color.
	red: normal reds have some black pigment on the body giving them more of a bicolor look, with a reddish/blackish body and red fins. However most breeders now work with extended red which are intense red from head to tail, including the pectoral fins :). These are prettier and many carry cambodian genes.
	steel blue: this is one of the three iridescent colors. The blue is lighter and more "cold" looking, like a grayish blue.
	royal blue: this is the second of the three iridescent colors. Royal blue is much darker and has almost a purple feel to it. Best see under a flashlight.
	green: this is the third of the three iridescent colors. Green is near impossible to detect without a flashlight. Many green bettas might look black or royal blue at first, but under a light their iridescent green is revealed.
	turquoise: everybody is always arguing about this color so let us just say that turquoise is a color between blue and green, some claim it is not green, while others claim it is nothing but green.
	copper: the latest iridescent color variation! these bettas were obtained by crossing with specific wild strains that showed some gold. Now they come in a light gold, deep copper, deep red copper and even purplish copper hues. these are truly gorgeous fish. Note that their true colors only come out when the light shines on them!
	black: there are currently thtee different black strains: Melano blacks, fertile blacks (also referred to as black lace - I call them Black Crystal) and the black coppers (I call them Black Crusaders).

u bi-colors

A bicolor betta has two solid colors. The body will be one solid color while the fins will be another. There are quite a few variations but the most common are:

u bettas with patterns

Patterned bettas are bettas with several color displayed in an organized manner (a pattern). Bettas with a bunch of random colors (which most pet store bettas are) are not patterned bettas and are called multicolors. You will not find multicolor bettas on my stock page, ever. I am however very very fund of bettas with cool looking patterns :) and pride myself on offering a large variety of them. Note that good patterns (even patterns) are VERY hard to produce and these fish remain rare and very desirable. hence if you look at my stock page and read the evaluation comments and the lot is tagged "very good pattern" then GRAB IT! there are basically two main type of patterns: Butterfly patterns and marbles. Note that all patterns do come from marble genes, or come from the expression of these genes. let's cover the main two and also glance at a third one I thought we should also mention.