Female bettas that flare and fight?

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

Christmasfish

Aquarium Advice Addict
Joined
Jan 11, 2004
Messages
1,601
Location
The South-SOoTHWEsT that is
Because I was setting a few tanks up to get ready for the gourami fry project:step two, a friend gave me three "female " bettas. Since he was going to feed them to his oscars..I took pity and agreed to take them. He said he had some fish nipping at them and they were not pretty enough. . And since I seem to have aaallll these tanks.......(I now have the 18, 3 -10s, 2 8-s and the original 1 -gals)
~sigh!~

WEll the three supposed tank mates are gnarly. As I put them each in with my poor tattered gourami that I just set up housekeeping for, 1 was fine, 2 were social. As soon as I prepped #3 out of quarantine, all hell broke out. The gourami doesn't register, ,they kinda go nose to nose with her, give her the hairy eyeball and swim to fight with reflections. Now I have a divider and the last shares ghost shrimp space.

I am sure that two are indeed female. They are large and have bass-like stripes when they are not in colors. And have skimpy, well shaped fins.After the fights they all had horizontal stripes. Especially the two blues that started the whole affair. The largest fleshy one and one of the blues have what I will assume is the egg tube showing. All are small finned compared to my christmas fish, but one is very aggressive and puts the fins out large as it can.The other two also flare out and show gill covers at her. I separated them as soon as I saw the shiny pieces of scales start to fly! Seems to me they were the ones doing all the nipping! The biggest one is actually the most relaxed. The small one even was sizing up the poor gourami! The Gourami is now (at hour 4) following the big betta around the tank like a shadow.

Is this normal with todays bettas? I know my Grandpa even had multiple males in his planted 30-50 gal tanks and kept a school of females with some same shaped other fish. But these gals are way belligerent..if gals they are..
My house is going to have as many aquariums as the fish store at this rate!!!
 
oh yeah....fems can be just as devious as males. I have a white/pearl female that I put in with my other two in my 10 gal divided (the fems are in the middle part) and she tore them up, so she is in her own 1 gal kritter keeper. Good Luck.

Tiff
 
Females can be evil little buggers! I try to keep all mine seperat, because once and a while they will just gang up on one and kill her and eat the eggs. It doesn't happen very often, but its a pain in the you know what when it does.

ashley
 
Is it more successful if female bettas sharing a tank came from a tank they shared with other female bettas? Or once you reduce the population (say down to four in a tank), does aggression increase?
 
I've got about 12 females in a 55 gal, with no problems. They were of course bought at a lfs that keeps all his female betta's in the same tank.
 
I have two bettas right now in a 10 gal, the only time they flare and get really mad is when they see their own reflection.

They don't have any aggression between them, Their almost glued together at the fins they stay so close together! :D
 
Once there together for a while the aggression will decrease. Adding new females they dont know will increase aggression, but then once everybody gets to know each other it will decrease again, unless they just hate each other.

ashley
 
The one girl may settle down after she is out of breeding mode. The other is just plain onery. Especially compare to my daughter's new dainty and gentle opaques.
No telling what type of stimulation these girls had in their former home. Aaa-tay has a big chunck out of her side. The spitfire displays so aggressively that the adult male next to her started showing bars...... ^.^. SG is definitely a plakat female, her egg tube is mighty! She certainly doesn't like blue/green/dark colored fish though. And the other girls immediately flare at her color blue. She has given them a complexes! Seeleup Goht indeed!
The big marbled monster that is now mine has no bully tendencies. Though the gourami male rushing the divider a few times to many made her flare up.
These girls were in betta cup then dumped in an aquarium about two weeks before we got them. At this point I suspect they damaged or killed some fancy fish is why they were earmarked for Chomper the Oscar :twisted:
 
YES!!! Female Bettas can be very aggressive. My one and only Female killed three other females and then ripped the male up.(he later died.) She is now an only betta child and is very happy. Her name is Miss Sassy. I have ben told the trick is to buy female bettas that have been raised together.
 
Back
Top Bottom