Bettas and bigger tanks
- Thread starter noidea
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barbs, angels, gouramis, and some kinds of tetras are all bad tankmates as they are more likely to nip at the betta. i had three neons tear up a male betta literally overnight.
wataugachicken;1119586; said:
Yup, I agree. You're asking for trouble trying to mix bettas with what you mentioned or guppies, platies, most livebearers for that matter, but especially the first 2.
Those of you that are wanting to put a betta in your community tank, think carefully about what your stock is and whether they will be compatable. Bettas are extremely prone to be nipped, and not only that, when your betta is asleep, if something tries to chew on him he will likely not wake up. They're some deep sleepers.
As far as mixing several male bettas together, I do NOT recommend this. If you're having to ask "Is there any way I can mix male bettas together?" You shouldn't be doing it. There are a few people that have had luck mixing certain males together, but this is partially luck and partially picking the right male betta. Some male bettas are almost completely nonaggressive and will retreat at the sight of another male or lose interest after a few seconds. I don't recommend simply planting your tank heavily and throwing a bunch of male bettas in there, this is NOT foolproof. As soon as one male sees another they will most likely fight and one will end up dead. This will go on until either a couple of males establish territory and everyone else is gone, or you'll end up with one male left. At the least you'll likely have a bunch of bettas with ripped fins and potential for disease.
If you want to mix bettas together that bad try females. And I'll warn everyone right now that even some females won't tolerate other females so be careful. And don't mix the lighter colored whiteish or white and orange bettas with the darker colored purple, red, blue, etc, because they lighter colored ones always seem to get picked on really bad. Don't know why, the other females just seem hostile towards them. I had this experience with my own, and after talking to several people it's apparently pretty common.
This is a great thread as i had a betta in a bowl for a while and i decided after about 4 months to put him in my 55 wide hex community tank and he died over night!! I was so upset as he had massive dramatic fins... But i think that it was the water current that stressed him out
my friend keeps 3 males in a tall 29 hex or something similar. there are TONS of plants, as well as guppies, danios, etc and a ginormous pleco and other small tetras and possibly barbs. the tank was tall and you could tell the fish had their own territories. as long as they have plenty of cover to break up lines of sight and the current, i'd say they generally do alright.
aren't bettas like, rice paddy fish? so they generally live in shallow, slow-current, low oxygen water with lots of plants anyway. or that's what i think i heard somewhere. but it explains some stuff, to me anyway.
aren't bettas like, rice paddy fish? so they generally live in shallow, slow-current, low oxygen water with lots of plants anyway. or that's what i think i heard somewhere. but it explains some stuff, to me anyway.
bermuda;1120052; said:
Yeah, they live in rice paddies, which are generally huge sprawling shallow fields of water, and bettas can breathe air so oxygen content isn't all that important as long as they can get to the top of the water to get air.
I have kept several males together with much sucess. I had 3 males that lived in a 2.5G tank that was divided up into 3 compartments for well over a year or so...now they all came from the same batch or two of fry from a local breeder and had lived their entire lived either together or staring at each other. One day one jumped the fence so to say in anothers compartment and there was no damage they just kinda took residense at opposite sides of the one compartment. At the time I had an EXTREMELY densely planted 55G with a herem of female bettas, some corydoras, a few fancy plecos, rams, tetras and a few various other things so I decided to add my 3 males.I added them at opposite ends and theyd occasionally bump into one another but their meetings were nothing more than some flaring and a bit of display and that was it. I dont recommend this to anyone, but mine lived together like that for several years...they bred several times and some of the fry made it to adulthood. Unfortunately a long winter poweroutage wiped out this as well as most of my tanks...but Im sure if it hadent theyd still be doing just fine today.
MCHRKiller;1120206; said:
See, and I've heard stories like that quite a bit, but you already had experience with bettas and you made a good judgement call on their personalities, figuring that these 3 males weren't hyperaggressive enough to tear each other part. You didn't just put 3 random males together and hope for the best. I think that would end in disaster unless someone got lucky, which can happen also, but I don't bet my fishes lives on luck *shrug*.
There are some bettas that just should NEVER be mixed with another betta, and this can include females. My red male veil tail would try to kill another betta he came into contact with, I'm completely sure of it.
I had backing on his tank for 3 days and he attacked his reflection for those 3 days nonstop....I've seen him with fish he doesn't like and he's persistent. Anything that remotely looks like a betta causes an aggressive response. And baby ghost knives, didn't get that one
Bettas can't see very well, so I could see a few fairly nonaggressive males living peacefully together in a planted tank. But try to put some together like the one I mentioned above and you'll just end up with ripped up fins and potentially dead fish.
