chel79

Can someone please help me? I have a 3 foot tank with 1 male betta, 3 female betta, 1 red tail black shark, 2 algae eaters, 4 zebra danios, 4 neons, 4 glowlights and 2 rasboras. On saturday I bought 6 rummynose tetras and now have none left because the female bettas attacked them. I thought as they were a good size that they would have been fine?

jsalemi

Betta's can be territorial, and may have seen the new tetras as invaders.

Barbrella

You must never keep male and female bettas together in a tank. Please separate all of them into individual tanks. The male will probably get killed and the females, as you see, can be very aggressive to other fish, especially any that have colours like bettas.

If you cannot separate the bettas, you need to take them back to the petstore.

armadillo

Hi Chel. I was reading your list of fish that you have in the tank and was surprised that it didn't stop after the first item: 1 male betta. I am afraid that each betta (male or female) needs to have a tank of their own. They are good hunters and highly territorial fish. I am sorry you were so ill-advised by the fishstore.

There are only a few fish that can sometimes live with bettas (and even then, it doesn't always work). These are otos and corys.

COBettaCouple

welcome to fishlore.

Unfortunately Bettas tend to be poor community tank fish. There are rare times when more than 1 Betta in a tank will work for a time, but it's a precarious thing and any change, even a sick fish, can undo it all and turn the tank into a war zone. It would be best for the Bettas and the other fish in that tank if each of the Bettas got it's own home. They really prefer interaction with us and I have found them to show their full character when they're alone in a tank of 5g or more.. actually the best tank that I've found for Bettas are the 6.6g bookshelf tanks that Petco sells. perfect for Bettas. If you look at our tanks page, you'll see one of them for our Betta "Teddy Bear".