Keeping Males Together

[Esfa]

Is it possible to keep males together? As if in like a 500gal aquarium, very heavily planted.
Would the males stalk out territories?
Would they fight to the death if they saw each other, or is this only when one cant get away?
Or would they all just congregate in a massive fight?

 

[liamg1285]

females would be ok but def not males. males need seperate tanks or divided 1s

 

[xweeqtx]

Not a good idea.. they'll fight to the death basically.

 

[Esfa]

How do they live in the wild then?
Is there only one male in the whole rice paddy?

 

[backtotropical]

In the wild, the little guys have enough space to get away from each other. Even Bettas will only resort to actual fighting as a last resort. However, in an aquarium environment, there is often not enough space for each male to have his own territory, and the fighting will inevitably commence.

I suppose in theory, if the tank was big enough, keeping males together could be successful, however people with tanks that big don't usually keep bettas.

BTT

 

[Amunet]

You also have to remember that wild bettas are a lot less aggressive than our petstore betta splendens.

 

[LauraFrog]

^ Agreed - all betta bloodlines are originally based on fighting lines. The fish that the thais started breeding colour into had already been bred for generations for aggression.

It would need to be a 500gal - MINIMUM - long tank. If you're going to go the expense of buying, planting, filtering and heating a 500gal tank personally I would not waste it on three inch fish that I could count on one hand... you could have anything, big cichlids, big plecs, an arowana maybe...

 

[pippoodle]

why not get a nice group of betta imbellis and keep in there , the males are very colourful and they are friendly
i have 12 betta imbellis in a 30 litre tank at the moment - awaiting move to 240 litre and they dont fight apart from the odd little chase off at food time but thats about it

here's a pic of an adult male imbellis from google - mine are only just colouring up at the moment , they are mostly wild caught though so thats why i hoping to breed them and make them more widely available - due to this you need to have indian almond leaves in the tank

 

[azulfire24]

wow! ive never seen an imbellius that bright! ususaly the ones i see are brown with a hint of green!