Centerpiece Fish... What To Get?

[ABNM]

By the end of this week I'll have 6 bettas and 6 cory cats in my 29 gallon tank. For the bettas, 1 is a male and the rest are females.... hey, don't yell, the male I have is extremely mellow with the girls and never nips anything. I seriously don't have to worry about him.

Anyways, I wanted a centerpiece fish... any ideas on what kind of fish? What about a krib or angelfish?

 

[stang1]

I know he seems fine now but it doesn't take long for things to change. It really is a bad idea to keep a male with females.
I'd make sure you have a spare tank for your male in case things don't work out.
I'm really not sure on a centrepiece fish as you are quite restricted having the male Betta in the tank. A lot of fish may end up nipping him or vice versa.

 

[SuperColey1]

IMO if the Betta is in there and youre after a centrepiece fish it would have to be a plec like a Queen Aboresque or similar that won't get to more than 6".

purely because if you are after something special, then you want something that will also not look like competition to the Betta, but as plecs stay out of the way and are bigger the Betta is unlikely to attack (or at least mine never has)

I can't comment on the male with females aspect as I only have 1 male in my 29G

Andy

 

[pinkdolphin_113]

i agree with andy on this as it's the safer way although there are more options than first meets the eye with male bettas.
i have a male in a community tank with sharks, 4 angels, a ram and well thats it but is there more to be said really? you'll need a peaceful fast fish really. angels can be abit cocky and try stand their ground and get nipped in which case the lfs is likely not to let you take it back because it's your misjudgement. also, having said that, the male may see any other fish as a challenge because of the females you have.

i thought it was okay to keep males with females anyway? as long as it was like 1:3 or something?

 

[stang1]

Males should only be kept together when they are breeding, other than that it's a definite no no.

 

[pinkdolphin_113]

Males should only be kept together when they are breeding, other than that it's a definite no no.

excuse me?

 

[stang1]

Males should only be kept together when they are breeding, other than that it's a definite no no.

excuse me?

Oops...I need some sleep.
Should have said a male and female should only be kept together when breeding!

 

[Rhiannon]

I dont know if you can put one in, ask the experts, but my centrepeice fish is my beautiful blue ram. He is a stunner and an eye catcher for everyone who comes over to my house.

 

[Tessla]

It's been mentioned that the male could pester the females, but females have also been known to beat up and sometimes even kill males as well. Keep in mind that the girls may gang up on him. That's also a very small tank to be keeping that many females with a male, there isn't really that much room for any of the fish to escape the attention of the others.

Agree with a plec, if you were to remove your male betta you'd be able to add a larger colorful mid to top dwelling fish like a gourami, perhaps an angelfish.

 

[pinkdolphin_113]

personnally, as i now notice the tank is only 29 gallon, i wouldn't suggest an angel. but the blue ram, as i and some one else suggested, is a perfectly peaceful fish with lots of colour. i have one and its unbeleivable how many different colours can come out of something so small! blues, greens, yellows, reds, black, orange. they're gorgeous lol i should be a fish seller

 

[fishfishfish]

i have put a female betta and a male betta in a tank and bred them and the female tore the males fins down to the point where he looked like a dark red female.it was bad.

 

[dwarfgourami]

SuperColey is spot on! There are so many handsome small plecs these days, it would make a great talking point.

 

[Jozlyn]

the blue ram,

Is that a German Blue Ram or some other type?

 

[ABNM]

Okay, please don't make any comments about the bettas! They have never shown any aggression whatsoever since I got them all about 1 1/2 months ago, and I have a good feeling they won't show aggression. They are very mellow. I even bought a book by a guy that's been breeding hundreds of types of fish for 50 years, he said that it is okay as long as you watch them closely.

 

[Tessla]

No one is saying it can't be done sucessfully if you get the right fish, but you're dealing with a very delicate situation which could easily change with time or any addition to the tank (and you're talking about adding a centerpiece fish, most of your options there will be seen as a threat by your bettas.) Many people on this forum keep and breed bettas and have experienced problems with setups like yours, very rarely does anyone mention an experience sucessfully keeping a male with females (for their full lifespan of several years) and that's almost always in a large tank of 55 gallons or more with no other fish. Information in books is often outdated or flat out wrong, if it's really giving you good information about keeping males and females together it should have included everything that you're hearing in this thread. 1 1/2 months is very little time to decide that any fish will get along well together for life, many fish will snap one month, two months or possibly even a year later in the same conditions.

I as well as everyone else on this thread suspects that you have been mislead by false information, nobody's blaming you though it often starts to happen when people ask for advice and ignore obvious problems because one person gave them the information they wanted to hear.