Dragon HMPK-- should I add pygmies?

[Wooble]

This is Clifford, hes my gorgeous red and white Dragon HMPK betta, love him to bits.



He lives in this tank, a 40 litre 45cmx30cmx30cm aquarium, on his own.
Filtration is 2 aquaone HOB filters, each alone is meant for a 40 litre aquarium but I was finding the flow a bit low hence why there is two. I also have a heap of plants in there, and a bit of a riparium going. WC's are 25% twice a week plus a daily top up.





Was looking into compatibility of other fish, have kind of settled on pygmy corydoras as they seem so sweet and I loved having corys last time I owned them. Was wondering if anyone had had any success with this combo/problems? Anyone had any experiences with betta and other fish besides pygmy cories?
Clifford is pretty mellow compared to my other betta boys, so he would /probably/ be the best candidate to live with other fish.



Thanks for any input
Jamie

 

[ocellatus]

Very nice setup. I've kept corys with betta in the past with no issues.

O

 

[FriedFlowerHornFillet]

The only issue with cories is that dive bomb thing they do when they swim up and down rapidly.
Sometimes fish get hit when they do that. I've had guppies actually get launched out of tanks.
Your betta looks pretty maneuverable though and pygmies are probably less like getting hit with a truck than others.

 

[Wooble]

Thanks! Well, I was encouraged by what you guys said and so went ahead and got 7 pygmy cories. They seem to do that dive bomb thing but so far hasn't hit the betta- he tends to keep out of their way. Day 2 and everyones looking happy with the cories chilling doing their thing in a group and the betta mostly ignoring them. Very happy with it Heres a video I took-- they are a lot more midswimming than the sterbai corys I kept!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8qH_8mIHRo&feature=youtu.be

 

[FriedFlowerHornFillet]

An error occurred 23 seconds into the video. From what I saw the cories are schooling well you have a very beautiful happy tank!
I absolutely love your setup. I wish I had more natural light here. At my old place I had a planted tank that had pothos and boat lillies on the top which climbed up and framed my windows I'm pretty limited where I'm at now.

 

[Wooble]

Thankyou Unfortunately I had to move the tank to a different part of the house where there is little natural light due to complaints of my tanks taking over too much living space I have a light for it though, and it still looks nice with a now blue background from the wall behind it.... I also got another planter for more riparium plants--now have acorus, syngonium and peace lilly in the riparium planters with lucky bamboo and acorus in the HOBs all seem to be growing well, as well as my swords which will at some point outgrow the 40 litre and need to be planted elsewhere.....

The betta mostly ignores his tankmates the cories did spawn about a week ago though, so hes been busy getting fat from eating the babies of which there are many...I think. Its very hard to tell as they are absolutely tiny! Hopefully some will survive as I've included a lot more moss and other plants and upped the amount I feed the cories a bit. Getting some microworms for them later in the week too

 

[Wooble]

I got a new tankmate for this tank... and now the star of the show is very grumpy with me

 

[HybridHerp]

My mother has a similarly snapped betta, she's keeping it with dwarf rasbora, strawberry rasbora to be exact. Its going well, they get left alone. The tank however looks meh but that's because I'm realizing that going ADA Amazonia in a small tank looks silly and is not worth it.

 

[FriedFlowerHornFillet]

The amazon is full of plants both big and small. You can go big in a small tank as long as your selection has similar requirements and the right considerations are made. I've always considered micro-terrariums and fairy gardens great practice. If your tank looks silly -you probably just aren't "pinching" enough.