There are a number of breeds of bettas....?

[sparrow]

crown tail bettas, half-moon bettas, round tail bettas, and short finned bettas and so on.

Which is the strongest breed of betta?
I would say in the overall health and hardiness of the fish

[mdellasalla]

So there are 50 types of wild types, BettaLu&Meg has a link to them.

As far as betta slpendens (the bettas we are used to seeing in the store) I have heard that the veil tails were rather hardy because they aren't bread to be that fancy since veil tails are a dominant tail type. I don't know how true this is, but my delta tail is definitely more frail than my veil.

[Emenon]

short-finned plakats are one of the hardiest.

[mdellasalla]

They do seem pretty hardy. They are kind of hard to come by though.

[hvincent]

(a lot of this is conjecture with very little basis on practical experience; i am just applying what i know from experiences outside of betta fish, so if i'm completely off the mark, someone should step on my toes )

I wouldn't know for sure how much this applies to bettas, but there's a thing in genetics called hybrid vigor, and it generally happens when different breeds are cross-bred and produce offspring with a blend of traits that make it a stronger animal than its parents. I know this gets done a lot with dogs, especially for working dogs (herding, hunting, assistance, etc.). I'd imagine similar things would happen with bettas as well; line-breeding (breeding offspring back to their parents or grandparents) specifically for recessive genes makes a certain strain genetically stronger, but also brings out faults in health that natural selection would normally take care of.

So yeah, if you are looking for a betta that's just physically in good shape, ones that look closer to the wild types are probably a good bet. I think bettas with multiple colors are sometimes considered more 'wild', since that's a trait that wild bettas have? In any case, bettas bred for a very specific coloring or color/finnage combination might be more frail than the wild-looking ones.

[Emenon]

i agree with hvincent. plakats and veiltails should be the hardiest, so they make great candidates as first bettas to care for. after you get the experience, you can try out crowntails, doubletails, and halfmoons.

[BettaLu&Meg]

correct emenon vieltails are the hardiest as for the plakats, i breed veiltails because of that reason, and as for plakats.........i want one!!

[BettaLu&Meg]

but overall there are over 50 different types of betta species, here one of the links i have, the other i have to search thru my folders [Registered users only can see links. ]

[mdellasalla]

I am surprised at how darn expensive some of those wild types are. I like the betta macrostoma (oscarbetta posted a pic in the wild betta family tree thread) and so I went to look on aquabid, and what luck! there was a pair listed.... only they were $185 with a $45 shipping fee o.O

[hvincent]

I guess they're expensive because they're so rare and hard to get.