Wild Betta Imbellis

The first time I saw wild Betta Imbellis was in the house of one of my primary school mates who happened to live a walking distance across the tarmac road and then a path follows along a drain leading to his house in front of a pond. His mum then owned a piece of sweet potato land adjacent to our house. My grandma and mum used to talk to her while she toiled on the land and they were extremely friendly to each other. One of his eldest brother was notorious and got involved in gangsterism and always went in and out of the prison, that was the story told to me by my mum. But the rest of the brothers were friendly and gentle, they were very nice persons to get along with. At the later part, one of the other brothers lost the lower portion of his leg, did not remember exactly what had happened to him, perhaps due to an accident. And I still occasionally bumped into his brother whenever I return to my home village.

The house was displayed with many wild fighting fishes in Horlick bottles. And they were extremely attractive to look at, and I fell in love at first sight with them. One fine day I went to the house trying to locate this friend of mine for play just like any other kids, but nobody was at home except those fishes, being not able to withstand the temptation of owning one and I took the liberty to scoop up one of them and put inside my pocket and brought home. The wild Betta was a very tough and hardy fish, it survived the distance which was probably about 8-10 minutes walk in my dry pocket without water. Once placed into a bottle of fresh water drawn from the well, it started to swim as if nothing could hurt and disturb it at all. Only Bettas could survive in a very narrow and constricted space or area as they always pop up to blow a bubble at the water surface and have a fresh gulp of air in return, instead of dependent and breathe on the dissolved oxygen in the water.

Since that uncalled for illegal acquisition of my first fighting fish, I started my hobby of keeping this " ikan laga" without looking back. I had been going around drains and ponds infested with leeches catching those wild fighting fishes during my teenage years and also even after I had got married and started a family. We rubbed salts on our limbs and sprayed insecticide on boots just to deter those blood sucking eerie creatures from sticking onto our bodies.

That pilfered fish was raised by me and I diligently dug up worms from behind the house and fed it. I suppose the worms were nutritious enough and it grew healthily to a bigger size than the wild ones over time. It always gave a splended display of colors whenever I placed a mirror for the fish to simulate a fight. The colors of the body and its gill covers were shining in iridescent blueish green color, its scales and eyes sparkle like little blue diamonds. The caudal fin and the pectoral fins were bright red while the dorsal and anal fins are feather like and blue. It was just so incredible to look at especially when it was aroused and ready to fight with a splendid display of fins and tail flapping. God created such wonderful creature, I just could not believe it!

One of the newspaper vendor who used to send daily newspaper to our home, occasionally also sell illegal lottery (Empat ekor) to my grandparents, using newspaper vendoring as a disguise. He saw my well kept fighting fish and liked it so much and offered 50 cents for me to part with it. At that time, it was a real big sum of money for a kid of standard 1 or 2 in the 60's. I hesitated for a while but after some pestering by him, I eventually sold it to him.

At one stage when I was in the secondary school, I had bought a female white Siamese specie so as to cross breed with the wild Betta Imbellis, and the hybrid offsprings were so unique and beautiful, and I never had a chance to breed the same kind after that. In preparing for the breeding ground, I half squashed some "Kangkong" plants to be immersed in a vase, waited a week or so for the crushed leaves and stems to rot a little bit as food for the fishes. Some larvaes of mosquitos had also found their ways into the container before placing the pair inside for the mating to take place. The bigger size Siamese female laid a lot of eggs, fertilized and picked up by the male and were placed onto a pool of bubbles on the water surface. When the small fries were hatched, they were too small and sometimes were eaten by the mosquito larvaes. With leaves and weeds as hiding places for the fries, they grew up real fast and they started to devour on the larvaes as their favorite food in no time. They had eventually eaten up all the larvaes and I had to feed them with small earth worms as they grew bigger in size.

I still like very much to keep wild Bettas Imbellis and I am always on the look out for any aquarium shops that I could acquire them or to places that I could catch them in the drains or puddles in the wild.