BettaCave.com
Title
Betta Cave
Description
I was born on February 29th, 1940. This makes me 15 years old! Lol! I started keeping fish when I was 10 years old. I started with guppies and livebearers. I developed a Tiger Doubletail Guppy with a yellow caudal and black spots that had two long spikes on the caudal, one on top and one on bottom. Even then I began keeping notes on my progress. I spawned my first pair of bettas in 1952. I then kept bettas and angels and killies for a few years. Went to Villanova University, and got married, and started raising a family. I still had my fish.
My first house had no basement. I had one wall in the kitchen/dining room lined with tanks and jars. We all ate together! Lol! . Then I bought an old farm house with a basement. There I built my racks and a Mason jar multi-filtration system for my bettas. I then joined the IBC in the middle 60s. It was then I discovered I was not alone with my bettas and all my work in trying to produce a separate color trait was for nothing. It was there I really learned about betta genetics because I was introduced to blacks. marbles, and the doubletails. To this day, I still remember going down to Dr. Al and Dr. Sue Liebetrau's house in Baltimore to the CHBBA meetings. CHBBA was an old betta club (Chesapeake Bay Betta Assoc.).
I started sending fish to shows. I was "blown out of the water" in the first show but I had two letters sent to me by two judges urging me to continue and to improve this fin or that color. (Back then, there was no "Novice Class" as there is today.) I did, and after that I started to place. I would retreat for a year and just work my genetics. Then come out again bigger and badder than before! I was pretty heavy into the blacks, steel blues, and doubletail butterflys, and was working on improving my red DTs. I was asked to be the guest speaker at the Baltimore Aquarium twice.
Contact
- Charles P. Lafferty Jr.
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- York Haven PA
- United States 17370
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