Revealing the Secret Life of Betta siamorientalis | Exploring Eastern Thailand EP3

This marshy field is where I finally found betta cyan orientalis. In this video I'm not only going to show you that the betta are here, I want to show you what they are doing, where they build their nests and how the males hold their territory in waters most people would walk past without looking twice. So there's not that much light left, it's the end of the day, so I don't want to waste any more time. So what I'm going to do actually is I'm going to get the basket and I'm going to try to scoop some bettas and if we do get some then in that case I will start filming. You use one of these baskets and then you just kind of go around the water edges and you scoop it out and see if you get any. So you just do something like this and you would scoop it out and see like right away we have a female, a baby one, another baby one. They just sort of come around the edges and you quickly scoop it out. Didn't get anything in here, just some insects. Yeah here we have a larger male they're still small, even the adults, way smaller than domesticated bettas. Now if you've been following my channel you know I don't normally usually catch any fish. I film everything in the wild but this time I've been spending so much time looking for them. I just want to make sure they are here before I spend hours looking at the waiting for the camera to record and not getting anything. It is clearly not enjoying being in these things so I'm gonna let it go and then start filming. As you can see the water isn't really clear in the middle but when you come to the edges right by the Eleocharis the water is crystal clear and this is the exact same situation we see with the betta splendens habitats that we've been to. They're always pretty much always in these Eleocharis plants and here is probably better habitat for them because it's more shallow and they like the shallow water but as you can see it's not clear at all and it looks like there's a big storm coming as well. Hopefully it'll be all right. The water was very shallow, some parts were muddy and it was full of cow prints but in between the grasses males were busy with their bubble nests. Some had eggs, some already had fry, all while the cows walk straight over the grass risking the next generation of betta Siam orientalis. You could stare into the perfect habitat for an hour and get nothing but they were here. Now I could stop scooping and actually film them. The important habitat here is the Eleocharis and other marginal grasses. This complex maze of plants hides the fish and breaks the line of sight giving the males somewhere to hold their territory, avoid each other and build their own nests. So the fish are not using the whole ditch, they are using this shallow edge where the stems give them plenty of cover. Most of the time the males actually look plain, brown, striped, almost perfectly camouflaged. If you were looking over the water they might swim past you and you might not even notice anything special. But once a male has a nest it cannot just disappear. Now he has something to defend. So he comes back to the same patch again and again and if you stick around that's when you actually start seeing its secretive life. Here I actually found a male with a female. It was a really quick interaction. She seemed to come from the bottom of the water. That is something I kept noticing. This fish seemed to disappear under the leaves and grasses and other plant material on the bottom of the shallow waters and then consciously come out again. She came into the frame, he opened his fins and tried to keep her attention. Then when she decided to leave he chased after her. This interaction happened just before I found the first nest. It might even be the same male I filmed later or it might be a different one in the same area. Later another smaller male came into the same patch of grass and you can see him hesitate as he notices the larger more dominant male. He switches immediately and chases the smaller male into the stems. After that interaction the female actually came back to the same location and this time she was even more colorful. That could be a sign that she was interested in breeding. However the male never came back into the frame. Maybe it was just outside of the shot. I honestly don't know. What I can say for sure is that this one is definitely a female. You can see this small white egg spot underneath the body. So I would say at least part of this interaction was courtship behavior. If you look just under the surface these unassuming bubbles are actually a bubble nest. Now there are actually many bubble nesting species found in Thailand. But could this be what we are looking for? Shortly after submerging my camera the owner of this nest revealed himself. It was a male Beta Siam orientalis. Now this was the first nest I actually found. At first I thought this might already have eggs but looking back at the footage I don't think it does. But there seems to be a tiny fry on the edge of the nest. However I wasn't able to find any other fry. And this also raises the question. Do Beta use the same nest more than once? We can see the male staying right under the bubbles and keeping the nest in good shape. He comes in, checks the surface, adds to the nest, then moves away again. And when he leaves his colors are bright. I can't see where he goes after that. Maybe he's looking for a female or maybe he's just patrolling around the nest. The second nest that I found was where things got even more interesting. You can see many tiny fry already hanging under the bubbles. They are almost transparent so if I was looking from above I would have definitely missed them. So this nest was already occupied. From this wider angle we can observe the male's behavior. Once the nest was occupied the male was not interested in letting any other fish get close, not even interested females. Even a tiny juvenile beta, almost the size of the fry in the nest, was enough to trigger a response. He rushed out, pushed it away and then went straight back to the nest. But you can see the male keeps adding more bubbles to the nest to make sure it's in good shape, taking breaks to chase intruders away. In another shot a female came close by. She actually looked interested in the nest but still he chased her away. At this point he already had fry so he was not trying to attract any more partners. He was guarding what was already there, chasing any intruders back to the nest again and again. I just wanted to remind you that my 2026 calendar is still available. It has some of my favorite photos from last year like this Badis Siamensis or this Maitre de Barrio Kubotai or even the Beta Siamorientalis, all taken in the wild by myself. And I also have some high resolution prints available on the website in this large size and a smaller one that you can see behind me. This is a sparkling gourami, this one is a pair of Beta Siamorientalis. Now let's get back into the video. How do we know these are actually Beta Siamorientalis? You might say they look like Beta Imbellis or Beta Splendens and yeah in Thailand other wild Beta from the Splendens species complex can also turn up in similar habitats. But the location here is a pretty good clue. We are right in the region where the Beta Siamorientalis was first described and while someone could have released other Beta species into this field another thing that you can check is the face. Splendens often shows two strong red bars over the operculum in simpler terms the area that covers the gills. In the footage that we got these males do not show any bars. And on the other hand Beta Imbellis has blue bars Compared to Splendens, Siamorientalis is usually darker as well and they have a lot more blue iridescence over the body. But honestly the stronger evidence here is really the region where it was filmed and the advice from someone who already knows this population very well. While I waited for the males to come back other things kept moving through the stems. Diving beetles, tiny crabs, small insects. It's not just Beta in here. There were also other species but the Beta really do seem to dominate the shallowest edges. What's really interesting is that the male does not react the same way to everything. He chases fish away from the nest but the crabs and diving beetles move through the same area without getting any response. Maybe they are not seen as a threat. Around the same shallow edges there were already fry and tiny juvenile Beta moving on their own. Some were still extremely small. Others were already starting to look like little Beta. So that right there where this cow is walking is where I just filmed a male Beta Siamorientalis. So yeah now it's all going to be muddy you can't forget about that. But it just goes to show where these Betas can live. This muddy dirty water where the cows go and you know you can see it's not that much water. I mean that is pretty much the reality of this place. One minute you are filming a male Beta the next minute a cow walks through it and the whole area turns brown. It's annoying enough for filming but imagine you are a tiny fish trying to protect a tiny nest made out of bubbles. But this kind of perfectly shows where these fish actually live. They are breeding in farm edges roadside ditches and muddy water that people and animals use every day. Their natural 100% wild habitats are pretty much gone. But luckily they manage to survive in places like this. Before leaving the area I found another field where a team of people were catching Beta Siamorientalis. They were using baskets working through those marginal grasses and checking the shallow edges. So if you ever bought a wild caught Beta for your aquarium this is probably how their journey actually started. Someone walking the shallow edges with the basket checking the grasses one patch at a time. A slow process where only a tiny portion of the fish will actually be a beautiful mature male. That they will want to keep and sell. The rest of the fish will most likely end up back in the water. This area is very popular for Beta fish and there's loads of shops on the side of the road selling them. It says a lot about this region and how these fish are part of the local culture. They are even the official national aquatic animal of Thailand. But if you want a separate video on that side of the Beta world I can do that on my second channel where I cover fish keeping and aquascaping. So let me know if you would like to see this on a future video maybe on my second channel. I can come back here and check some of these Beta stalls on the side of the road. I mean I just think that's so unique I've never seen anything like it. That is where this Eastern Thailand series ends. Not in the clearest stream, not in some pristine wetland, but in a shallow ditch where the camera barely fits, cows walk through the water and wild Beta are breeding between the grass. As always, thanks for watching. If you enjoyed the series, liking the video, leaving a comment or checking out the calendar and prints below really helps me keep doing this. I'll see you in the next one.