Currently, I'm working on breeding Betta Splendens, better known to most people as Siamese Fighting Fish.
I've started with two males and what I thought were half a dozen females, but which turned out to be three short-finned plakat males and two females (one died before I sexed it properly). They were all very young and similar looking when I started so it was hard to tell.
I plan to keep one of the plakat males, as he's turning out to be quite handsome, and will adopt the other out as he's too plain for breeding use.
My first spawn finally happened on the 16th of November, 2004, after about a month of preparation and trial and error (matching two males by accident - no fighting, surprisingly, but no eggs either! : P ). My steel and purple colored male spawnwed with the smallest of my females, a pretty little turqoise with red touched fins. She's not a perfect match - the pretty plakat male was supposed to be his mate, as he is also very purple colored, but that obviously didn't work - ha ha. We'll see what we get from this pair in a few weeks if everything goes alright!
My second spawning pair is also my oldest, so they may or may not spawn. The female dropped eggs the other night and is still swollen, but the male is about a year old and may or may not actually pair properly. The female is probably about 7m. The male is a very pretty and very robust corn-flower blue veil tale and the female is very dark colored and natural - not sure if she's a plakat or veil, but hopefully we'll see their progeny soon too! Both are very irredescent, so they could really have some pretty fry. If this match doesn't work, I'll try the same female with my red-orange male (maybe 5m old) and see if that works - she's MUCH larger than him and a pretty tough girl though!
The red-orange male (also a veil tail) is waiting in the wings for now and the plakat has only been a teaser so far for conditioning, but they may pair with the same females in a few weeks, or I may try another batch of un-sexed young'uns - I don't like getting stuck with un-usable males though! We'll see.
Besides the bettas, I also recently started experimenting with guppies. I have a lovely male who's pure yellow and four various females. I've only had two fry so far (the first batch was born in the parent's tank - oops...) as I haven't figured out how to tell when the girls are about to "pop". I think I'll have som fun with genetics once I get a hang of them though!