Community tankmates for female betta

[stoneydee]

I'll try to make the long story short. . . twenty gallon, cycled tank into which went four gorgeous female bettas. The tank is highly planted and aquascaped to provide cover. Apparently, Little Miss (that's what I'm calling her now) romped all over one of the others while I was at work, and when I got home, I had a floater with very little finnage left. I had introduced all on a Friday afternoon, so I could watch for aggression over the weekend, but I guess that was just enough time for Little Miss to decide she owned the tank - and these were all previous tankmates at the LFS. I never saw any chasing or fin nipping, but in the end, I now have one female betta left, swimming around in a 20 gallon tank.

I've pretty much decided not to sacrifice any more female bettas to Little Miss' cause. I think by now she probably thinks all the real estate is hers, so I thought I'd put some other tropicals in with her. I've been reading about tankmates for bettas, and already have white clouds, glow light tetras, dwarf African frogs and zebra danios in the other subdivided tens with my male bettas with no problems at all. What I'd really like is a couple of dwarf gouramis and three corys. That's where the problem comes up.

Most of my reading says no gouramis, but some says dwarfs are different. And since this isn't a male betta, and we don't have the flowing fin issue, what do you guys think about adding dwarf gouramis to the tank? Am I asking for disaster?

 

[Allivymar]

Possibly. Depends on the individual fish.

I had put my betta from work in with my dwarf gouramis while I was home on vacation. For a month all was fine. Then one weekend one of the dwarfs decided to start on a bubble nest and kicked the betta's tail. I think it had to do more with sharing the same area of the tank then conformation, since both inhabit the top of the tank and both are up there for air. But someone else here (name escapes me - sorry!) has a male betta and a dwarf gourami who are best buddies.

 

[William]

If she is that aggressive, I would put some semi-aggressive community fish with her.

Maybe a few of the more mild mannered dwarf cichlids. You don't want hugely aggressive fish, just enough to where they can defend themselves.

 

[Menagerie]

I second William's advice. I had a female betta that did great in a tank with cories, ram cichlids and a few larger tetras.

 

[Menagerie]

I should have mentioned--my female betta was aggressive towards her own species.

 

[PlatyLady]

But someone else here (name escapes me - sorry!) has a male betta and a dwarf gourami who are best buddies.

I believe it's fearlessfisch who started a thread like that.

 

[fearlessfisch]

Yep, mine get along great. But it's a bigger tank (55 gal.), and my betta is a male. I guess you could try it, but I would have another tank handy just in case.

 

[ChileRelleno]

We've four female Bettas living together with a Albino CAE in a 10gal, we've had some infrequent problems with aggression. These have usually been resolved by a little isolation or by the fish themselves establishing/maintaining the pecking order. We've had at separate times male or female Bettas in our regular community tanks, some did well some didn't, it depends on the fish... Lets face it these are not docile peaceful fish amongst themselves and some just don't mix well at all with others (psycho fish). Long flowing fins can be just too tempting on another fish or some of our Bettas seemed to have a "No swim zone" around themselves for other fish.
Fish are like people, everyone is a individual.

 

[Christmasfish]

I nipped our aggresive girl in the bud. She is and her sister are plaa-ghats, the third oscar- rescued fish was: unrelated, 3x bigger and much more docile.
aAl three hate blue fish because of her (she is dk royal BF) . ANY blue fish is in danger of losing scales around them. All three girls show hostility to blue anything (even toys). They are pre sensitized.
Seeleup Goht has to live alone. She is so aggresive that -she has outdisplayed our males and made them show fear bars.
I'd not chance her with any gentler tankmates.
If you really like her, then Divide 8-10 inches off for her and stick some small community fish on the directly filtrated larger side. Then she has "company", some space to decorate for her and for her to swim around and less movement in her water, but the benefit of having a stable parameter because it is more water.
Maybe you can put a few non-bite sized snails on her side. Or a froggie.

 

[Scott1980]

My female Better shares a tank with Black Skirt and Neon Tetras. There's also a ADF, Cory Dora, and Clown Pleco. I've never had incidents. I use to have a Tiger Barb in there, when that happened all Hell broke loose especially between those two. Bettas are funny to with personality. I've had friends that could put male bettas in community tanks, I floated mine in a bad and he flared and freaked the other fish out. Sometimes they get along, sometimes they don't. It could go either way.

 

[stoneydee]

I put some glow light tetras in with her a couple of days ago (from a planted tank with tetras and danios) to see if she would tolerate any tankmates of if she needed her very own 2 and 1/2 gallon tank. Much flaring and attempts to chase, but the coolest thing happened - all the tetras turned around to face her and wouldn't budge. So far, so good - everyone still has all fins intact, and no one's hiding out.

So. . . what do you guys think about a couple of German blue rams?