I Was Randomly Looking For Betta Breeding Tips When...

[jarmado]

oy...

You probably know you should NEVER put two males in the same aquarium together. However, there's an exception to the rule, using this top secret technique to simulate conditions from nature, which allows you to get away with having up to two males (and 4 or so females) together in a 10+ gallon tank... with zero problems whatsoever! (Page 22)

i have one male and 3 females on my tank.
no problem, whatsoever.

 

[starrynightxxi]

oh, i believe it can be done, but TWO males in a 10g with females? I know it's been done, I've heard of success stories with more than one male in a tank, but that was always in tanks at least twice that size and well planted so they could easily slip away from one another. A ten gallon seems way way too small for that, though, even planted.

 

[BWBettas]

I know a breeder who keeps 10 males and females together in a tank fine and dandy

Bret

 

[starrynightxxi]

i've heard of breeders not removing males from tanks. something about as long as they've grown up together and never been seperated they can be kept together, but one, breeders generally know what they're doing, and two, the point is that they've never been seperated from those males. petshop bettas have probably not been in a tank with anoher male for months.

unfortunately i doubt most people could pull this off, especially with the common LFS veil tail betta. And i would also be worried that people wouldn't bother reading anything, they would see that comment and say "hey! i can keep two males and four females in a 10 gallon tank!" and throw them in. Gee, now i wonder why they're all dead...

but it doesn't really matter. most of the people who buy bettas aren't going to research them anyway, so they'll never see that comment. they'll just do it anyway because for some reason the name "siamese fighting fish" doesn't start alarm bells ringing in their head.



then again, maybe it's like keeping cichlid

 

[splashluff]

something about as long as they've grown up together and never been seperated they can be kept together

I feel that is total crap. Unless you're growing them out in 100 gallons, and each male can establish a territory. By 3 months, my boys were savage with each other... and I kept them in the grow-out as long as possible, basically. I had one male who looked sooo female, until I watched him maim every other sibling that came near his "territory" (a small cave).

One male and 3 females is just as insane, IMO, if you're dealing with a 10 gallon tank. A massive tank that could mimic nature, like 50+ gallons, is not quite as senseless.

 

[starrynightxxi]

-lol- I was only saying what I've read, splashluff, but i feel the same way as you about both things. Although i have heard reports of people having two males in tanks that are 50+ that largely leave one another alone, and I believe that because they are small fish and if that tank is heavily planted, then one can get away from the other easily. The chasing fish isn't going to use the whole tank, IMO as it's territory, that's too much for one guy to patrol.

But in any case I wouldn't do it myself. The amount of space one little boy would need to not seek, find, and kill the other is so much that you would probably almost never even SEE the bettas. In a ten gallon, for the boys not to rip one another to shreds.... I can't imagine what that tank would looks like...

 

[vancouver]

It's not explained in a way that young people will understand... generalizing about how males-males and males-females have been kept together is misleading people. I'm sure kids will try it out because they read it on a website and believe it's as easy as it's said.. which it isn't..

oh well.. there will always be stuff like this thrown around.. if it seems to good to be true.. it probably is.

 

[Synirr]

something about as long as they've grown up together and never been seperated they can be kept together

I feel that is total crap. Unless you're growing them out in 100 gallons, and each male can establish a territory. By 3 months, my boys were savage with each other... and I kept them in the grow-out as long as possible, basically. I had one male who looked sooo female, until I watched him maim every other sibling that came near his "territory" (a small cave).

It's more true for plakats than others I think, and not all the males can be kept together, only the less aggressive ones. I still had 4 males in with my females in the 20g long growout tank at 6 months in my last spawn, and Wuv leaves some males in with hers too... not a single nipped fin. Once you separate them though, even those gentler males become aggressive as all heck . But anywho, I can tell you from experience, it is true under certain circumstances.

 

[juliehainsworth]

It is possible to keep more than one male in a ten gallon tank (would not recomend it though) as I have two juvies in with gabriel in a ten gallon tank at the mo but thats because I gave in trying to keep them in the critter keepers within the tank! At first one got pretty beat up by his brother but that is healing! They do nip at each other sometimes but its not very often and my females have more nips in their fins recently than the males! I have plants in the tank as well as other places that the guys can go to if they feel threatened!