The Sire is steel blue melano BF HM with a good bodyshape with a smooth topline. He used to have great balanced finnage with a nice butterfly pattern in all three unpaired fins. I borrowed him from my friend Matthias Polzin (Germany) who already spawned him. His finnage got damaged during that first spawning but further he is very vital and in great condition. A before picture can be seen on the right. The Dame is a royal blue with an nice long body and smooth topline. She has an amazingly shaped caudal fin with nicely long outer rays and sharp corners. Her dorsal has a good shape, the anal fin is nicely parallel and the ventrals are of good length and volume. She was awarded Best of Show female at the Holland Betta Show 2014.
With this cross I want to infuse the melano trait in my own HMPK line by the generation of outcross candidates for the future. The offspring (F1) will likely be darkbody non-metallic steel blue and royal blue based longfinned HM. All fish will be carrier of melano black and PK.

07/09/14: The pair spawned. Eggs in the nest.
08/09/14: The fry hatched. Seems to be a decent sized spawn.
10/09/14: The fry entered the free-swimming stage. Removed the male.
26/11/14: 12 weeks old. Great to see those steel and royal blues!

16/12/14: 14 weeks old. The raysplitting in some of the young males seems quite extensive with already some overlap in webbing. Curious to see whether the size of the caudal will catch up with the lengthy anal finnage after jarring.

19/12/14: Jarred the first males!

12/01/14: 18 weeks old. Most males in this spawn show a pretty good overall balance with respect to finnage length. The branching however is becoming quite extreme causing the outer rays to bend outward and the webbing to overlap. Although I am far from a fan of the finnage of these fish, I truely love their color.

19/01/14: Found some fish in the growout which seem to have a more moderate branching than their brothers above. Let's see what this will bring when they mature. Here an example: