i have a community tank and would love to add a male fighter have seen a gorgeous electric blue 1 in my fish shop, he is in a tank with neons and seems peacefull enough, are they ok for the community tank and are they easy or hard to keep?

They are easy to keep.

They are NOT suitable for a community tank. If you want one, buy a 2-5 gal tank and have him by itself.

Fighters are easy to keep but very prone to being nipped as well as nipping themselves. I wouldn't place him in with an RTBS, and the tetras you mentioned in the other thread are a questionable tank mate . Community tanks and Bettas (fighters) is a grey area of the hobby ATM. Many have tryed it and had it work, like me . Others have tryed it and found it to end with the death of the fighter or the current tank mates and on occasion some tank mates and the betta .
You would be best asking about them in the Betta area of the forum, where some of the more experienced Betta keepers can help you

All the best
Rabbut

I have a male siamese fighting fish in a community tank with mollies, dwarf gouramis, peppered cordyas catfish, guppies and a red tailed shark. I have had no problems except the fighting fish sometime warns off my red gourami but is all mouth and no trousers! Hope this helps.

This post has been edited by brooksy: May 25 2008, 08:25 PM

ok thanks for the advice i think i will probably give it a miss

have a male fighter in a community tank with 12 neons, 10 glowlights and 6 corys - has got on fine with all of them (the fighter was young when I bought him though, so maybe that made a difference)

there were dwarf frogs in there too, again were fine with the fighter, but i've separated the frogs from the rest of the tank now

i have a betta in a community tank with RTS, gourami and angelfish, bottom feeders, everythings fine and always has been

I've kept a Betta with a small school of Neons and a small school of Corys in a 20g, all was fine.

What is RTS btw?

rts is me being too lazy to type red tailed black shark lol

Most all bettas are not suitable for community life. They're not called "fighting fish" for the hell of it.

But there's no convincing some people that just because something appears to be working, doesn't mean that it actually is.

I've been considering the same question over the last month or so and the consensus seems to be that it depends on the personality of the fish. I'm not going to risk it personally, I'll be getting a male and just keeping him with Cory's in a month or so.