The Sire is a black PK with a strong, full body. His shape reminds me of that of the fighters. The anal is quite parallel to the body with a big volumnous rounded caudal and dorsal. Without any doubt this is one of the most clean blacks I have seen so far. I have got this male from Ugur Sentürk (Chaos) from Germany who purchased this guy in a petshop. The Dame is a red PK from my own line with a strong, full body and impressive broad dorsal.
So why crossing black x red? To be honest this cross is a color experiment. The ideal black betta as well as the ideal red betta are both fish without any form of iridescence on their body and finnage. I therefore hypothesized it would be very interesting to cross a black with a red as the intensity of both colors might benefit of this. Further, the finnage of the female should compensate that of the male.
The offspring (F1) will be darkbodied fish. In case the male is carrying the cambodian gene some lightbodied fish might appear too. Colorwise I would speculate that there is a chance of both solid black as red fish popping up as well as black/red bicolors.

15/12/09: The pair spawned! There are a lot of eggs in the nest and on the floor. The sire is doing his uttermost best to blow them in the nest.
16/12/09: The fry hatched. Interestingly the fry is very strong and lively and already moving itself through the tank.

18/12/09: Fry in the free-swimming stage. The Sire was removed.
19/12/09: The fry is eating artemia/BBS. Looks like a pretty big spawn.
28/12/09: The fry is now almost 2 weeks old and growing nicely.

13/01/10: The fry is now 4.5 weeks old and growing well on tubifex and BBS. Some fry start to show some red in the finnage.

19/02/10: The fry is now 10 weeks old and developing nicely. All fry started with red finnage with black/brown bodies. Some of the fry now seems to loose the red in the finnage. There are a few fish showing some nice broad dorsals.

14/03/10: The fry is now 13 weeks old. There are 4 fry which have lost all the red and only show black pigment.

23/03/10: The fry is now 14,5 weeks old and several fish already have been jarred. Most fry are red/brown bicolored fish with exception of the 4 blacks (of which 1 is marbling). All fish do show a little bit of blue iridescence which most likely was introduced by the red female. Finnage-wise there is a lot of work to do, but I do see some potential in these fish. I personally am very happy with the strong bodies of these fish.

17/07/10: The fry is now 31 weeks old.

09/08/10: Here a picture of a black/red bicolor male which shows the best finnage potential of the whole spawn. This guy is now 34 weeks old:

11/09/10: One Trad. PK male of this spawn were send to the Holland Betta Show 2010, the Netherlands. He won a prize his showclass:
5th Traditional plakat male class - AOC