Female betta acting funny

I recently got a female betta, she was the sweetest one at the store she would follow the other female bettas but she wouldn’t attack them, it was really cute.
Since I’ve had her home I’ve had her in a 10 gallon tank with several cherry shrimp a nerite snail some guppies an otto catfish and two Kuhli loaches that hide most of the time.
Recently I move some new baby guppies over with her and put in two mystery snails that I was going to put in another tank.
Today I saw she was chasing all the other guppies so I moved most of the guppies and she seems to be OK now but she still seems to go after the guppies that were just born, is this normal is she really hungry?
I feed her regularly and so does my mom. I saw some thing that said it might be that there’s too many things in with her so I took a lot of the guppies and put them in with their mom in the other tank.
Just curious to what it could be and what I can do to make things better, thank you for your time.

 

Bettas are predatory by nature, she is probably trying to eat the baby guppies which is to be expected. Big fish eat little fish, that's just how it is and a betta loves to stalk and chase their prey.

 

Welcome to fishlore David3738,

Don’t worry to much about punctuation David3738 I can understand what you wrote no problem.

Betta are definitely predatory fish that eat insects in the wild. Both from the surface and swimming insects like mosquito larvae. No doubt they eat small fish in the wild as well including other betta fry , perhaps ?
Hunting down a meal has little to do with hunger. It’s a natural thing for most fish. There is little point in over feeding any fish in an attempt to stop it chasing things that wiggle.

You ask what you can do?
To answer your question.
Adding floating plants real or plastic is as good as adding any clean plastic takeaway containers or even drinking straws. A plant like hornwort will give the small fry a better chance in any tank .

 

My sister has a betta tank as do I and we've discovered that her betta is fine with the tetra in the tank because they were in there first then she added the betta. We tried to add a Mickey Mouse platy and her betta was flaring at it and nipping at the cup we had the platy in (as a test to see if the betta would be okay) so we put the platy in a different tank. So, it could just be that. Your betta was fine with what was in there because it wasn't new. Adding a new fish could've been what set it off.

 

She may go after those mystery snails as well. You might want to move them to your other tank. Those antenna might look very interesting to her, and bettas have been known to bite those off, unfortunately.

 

Guppies are really bright and colourful fish with large tails, usually don't get on too well with Betta's because of that, they see them as competition in their territory.
Also as someone else said, they are predators and some will go after other fish, even if you feed them. The stomach of the Betta is about the size of it's eye, I feed my girl one Betta pellet a day and that's enough for her.
Betta's usually don't know when to stop eating and will eat until they literally bloat and die. From experience; that makes it difficult keeping multiple species with a Betta because they will try and eat all the food. Both my Betta's have also been food guarders and will guard any food at the bottom of the tank until it's small enough for them to eat.

Females are a lot more lively than the males usually. Mine lives with some Neon Tetras, she's never hunted them (one of them is mouth sized at the moment as I was gifted it recently), but she does sometimes chase them if they go into her line of sight.
My old male Betta, Chita (hence my name and pic) was a nightmare for chasing some types of fish. I tried introducing him to some Cory's and he terrorised them so I had to re-home them. He did get on very well with the Nerite Snails and Amano Shrimp however, he would even hang out with them, but I also know people who have had Betta's kill shrimp.

Honestly I think it just depends on the temperament of the fish if it can live with others or not.


I would not suggest getting more fish to keep her company, the tank has become her territory now and she's may not take to kindly to new fish in her space. Unless I saw my fish going after the snails, I personally would just leave them be.

 

She may go after those mystery snails as well. You might want to move them to your other tank. Those antenna might look very interesting to her, and bettas have been known to bite those off, unfortunately.

Plus they have a trap door..if your betta hunts snail it could be fatal if the right moment a mystery snail clamps down ..if she was trying to eat it, it can get her mouth caught and suffocate. It’s not common but happens. So personally I don’t keep any snails with trapdoors with fish…that loves to at snails. Hope that helps.