attempting to breed betta, advice please!

[angmat]

after keeping male betta's for the last couple of years i've decided to try my hand at breeding these guys.

i've currently got 2 male betta's, a red & blue one. i've had both these guys for about 1 year.

the breeding set up.

25-30 litre tank. i had a sponge filter but i decided to remove it as it was causing too much water moment. i've added lots of plants & heater( 26 degrees). i introduced the red male betta to the tank a couple of days ago & he seems to have settled in well.

today i added a plastic container/bottle into the tank & added a blue female betta into the container. the male obviously has full view of the female & tried chasing her until he realized he couldn't get in.

i've got them on pellets & bloodworms at this stage.

now the questions i have

do the colors of the male/female need to be the same? will they be any issues that the male is red & female is blue?

is there anything i can do to improve chances of breeding?

[Northernguy]

I have never bred bettas but there a few members that have.
Here are some articles that may help you out.:22:
http://www.aquaticcommunity.com/bettafish/breeding.php

http://www.aquaticcommunity.com/bettafish/breeding2.php

[wolf_eyes]

I don't want to be downer or anything but breeding bettas is a lot of work. The act of getting a compatible pair can be hard enough. Both the male and female, even with proper introduction may not spawn and can do some serious damage to each other. The babies will require special food and water changes several times a week to keep the water quality up. When the betta fry get older, the males will fight and they have to be separated. Seeing as how bettas can have up to 500 fry, that's going to be a lot of jars/seperaters/whatever you choose to keep them in.

Generally you also don't want to use bettas that you get from normal pet stores. They usually not the healthiest gene wise and you're never sure of their age. Younger bettas tend to be more willing to breed than older ones, like most creatures. Most betta lose their "spunk" at about 14 months.

Before you go further I would suggest reading these links along with the ones that Northern Guy suggested. I think they give a realistic look at how to breed and what to expect

http://joshday.com/howtobreedbettafish.htm
http://www.bettatalk.com/selecting_stock.htm

I hope I didn't come off too harshly, I just wanted to let you know that breeding bettas is a MASSIVE task and is much more work intensive than breeding a lot of other fish.