The Sire is a royal blue HMPK bred by Teeruch Poparnich (Xmanbettas) from Thailand. The thick royal blue color makes me think of some "dragon" influence in his background. He has a very nice balanced appearance, a nice D-shaped caudal fin, a broad-based dorsal and full ventral fins. The Dame is metallic blue HM PK with a strong body and a nice thick peduncle. Her caudal has a good D-shape, the anal is nicely parallel. Based on her phenotype I am not sure whether these Dame is metallic royal blue or (metallic) turquoise based.
With this cross I hope to fix the strong bodies, broad dorsals and quality finnage in my iridescent HM PK line. The offspring (F2) will be metallic blue HM PKs. Based on the width of the dorsal fins, there is a chance of DTs popping up.

The Dame is also mother of: BT300811

20/10/11: The pair spawned!
21/10/11: The fry hatched.
22/10/11: The pair spawned again. The fry of the first round entered the free-swimming stage.
23/10/11: The fry hatched of the second spawn hatched.
24/10/11: The fry of the second spawn entered the free-swimming stage. Removed the male.
25/10/11: I personally never ever had such small fry in any of my spawns so far.
26/10/11: The fry is eating BBS.
19/11/11: The fry is growing very slow and experiencing swimbladder problems.
03/12/11: The fry is now 6 weeks old. By feeding them very little every 2 days it seems the swimming bladder is slowly starting to stretching out towards the peduncle. Made a picture of two DTs of this spawn.

30/12/11: The fry is 10 weeks old and a bit behind in size considering their age, but ll have recovered from the swimbladder initial problems. They are now developing nicely and catching up.

23/01/12: The fry is now 14 weeks old.

28/01/12: Two jarred males and two females from the grow-out, now 15 weeks old. The fish in this spawn show amazing colors and beautiful toplines. However, the bodies of some fish are slighty too short. Even though some of the DTs in this spawn do not have equally distributed lobes in the caudal fin, they still show quite a good potential to work with.

07/02/12: Another jarred male, now 16 weeks old:

13/02/12: Some fish from the grow-out at 18 weeks old:

28/02/12: Without any doubt one of the best males I bred in my fishroom!

07/04/12: 24 weeks old, without any doubt the best male I bred so far.