# Siamese Fighting Fish (Betta)



## matt020593 (Oct 10, 2006)

Can these fish be kept with any other fish like Guppys?
Sorry if this is a stupid question lol.


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## HABU (Mar 21, 2007)

very much with guppies...bettas don't do well with many fish but guppies are excellent!!


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## Berber King (Dec 29, 2007)

Dont keep them with guppys as their long tails can provoke fighters into thinking they are rivals.


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## fishboy (Aug 7, 2007)

fighters usually like to nip.....guppies with large flowing tails are usually too tempting but it "could" be ok if given a large tank and lots of plant cover.....then they can't focus the aggression on 1 fish.


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## HABU (Mar 21, 2007)

that's all crap... i've done it so i guess i must have been high or something....jeez! :crazy:


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## wohic (Jun 19, 2006)

my fighter is in with guppys and white clouds......absolutly no problems at all, fish like all animals have their extreemists, we had a rogue gourami one :lol2: he was a bugger, but in general there should not be a problem


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## HABU (Mar 21, 2007)

guppies and bettas alike need a well planted tank that is slow moving.... any fish in the wrong set up will behave differently... a great example are tiger barbs.... folks with one or two in a stupidly barren tank are just asking for problems..... female bettas make even better tank mates. may this and may that stuff is bogus....it may rain.... with fish, first the habitat- then the fish. i have a fully planted tank and keep all kinds of stuff because it's a natural environment and thus all the fish behave naturally....... how are your hatchet fish doing with your tiger barbs???:whistling2:


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## Berber King (Dec 29, 2007)

Well in the years i worked in aquariums,i saw numerous bettas displaying to and chasing and biting male guppies."Crap" i guess.


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## HABU (Mar 21, 2007)

Berber King said:


> Well in the years i worked in aquariums,i saw numerous bettas displaying to and chasing and biting male guppies."Crap" i guess.


 
i bet that they were pet shop tanks not real tanks...eh?


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## asm1006 (May 5, 2007)

Our fighter fish has been fine with our guppies, nice big tank and he is happy swimming up and down all day.
One of our mollies was the offender in bullying in fact.x


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## Mez (Feb 19, 2007)

Male betta may eat guppies. Displaying is very rare, if they dont like em they'll probably just eat them. My big male CT lived only on livefoods, including tadpoles, danios, guppies and neons...then there was a betta in a community tank (relaxed slow moving tank bear in mind) - most bettas will live in harmony with most small fish tbh, just dont blow them around with a big current!


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## zirliz (Nov 15, 2006)

They eat baby guppies, Platies and some swordtails never got along with Siamese fighters, guppies mainly males fins get nipped by male siamese fighters


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## vicky1804 (Dec 12, 2006)

Before I knew about betta's I kept a male in my community tank with no problems at all.He was in with guppys, mollys, tetras,Blue rams,couple of catfish
Like I said he never caused any trouble and no one really bothered him.
He got fasinated with my talking catfish one night but got bored after 10 mins
lol


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## Esfa (Apr 15, 2007)

Males do better being kept on their own in a 2-5gal tank. Maybe with a snail.

Females do best on their own or in a sorrority, which is a large grop of them on their own in the tank.


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## bromley (Jan 17, 2007)

most aquatic shops ive been in to keep fighters with a range of fish ; guppies and tetras


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## -matty-b- (Dec 13, 2007)

iv seen pictures of really nice fighters but in pet shops they always seem to look 'miserable' and not very colourful


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## Gecko_Sean (Aug 15, 2007)

In the wild bettas come from rice paddies in thailand and guppies are from the amazon river so keeping them together isnt 'natural' i have had alot of guppies ripped up by male bettas. And i have had large bettas even eat neons and guppies. I would keep bettas on their own in a nice small tank about 5 gallons.


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## HABU (Mar 21, 2007)

male bettas tend to lurk in the plants while guppies like the mid and upper water levels. female bettas run about more than males. male bettas usually only leave the plants to eat or take a gulp of air. bettas and guppies don't hang together and guppies being better in groups, it's hard for a betta to single out an individual guppy to pick on. male bettas hate being exposed in open water where guppies hang out mostly.... just my experience.... always have a planted tank.


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## Esfa (Apr 15, 2007)

I just tried to spawn my bettas, he ignored her. I think i got a gay betta. :bash::bash:


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## HABU (Mar 21, 2007)

i've spawned them several times before... it's all in how you do it. there are tricks to it.


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## Fudge Gecko (May 15, 2006)

HABU said:


> male bettas tend to lurk in the plants while guppies like the mid and upper water levels. female bettas run about more than males. male bettas usually only leave the plants to eat or take a gulp of air. bettas and guppies don't hang together and guppies being better in groups, it's hard for a betta to single out an individual guppy to pick on. male bettas hate being exposed in open water where guppies hang out mostly.... just my experience.... always have a planted tank.


I agree. If it is a large tank with lots of plants they should be OK. But big aggressive male bettas may get stressed if forced to be in the company of guppies with very large, colourful tails.


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## Mez (Feb 19, 2007)

Esfa said:


> I just tried to spawn my bettas, he ignored her. I think i got a gay betta. :bash::bash:


Male bettas will never "ignore" females unless you just chuck em in together - they should be kept seperate all the time except for when breeding, and when the male and female (most important..) have been properly conditioned for breeding, you should put the females tank in view of the male - he will start building bubble nests and displaying...she should change colour and have visable breeding stripes..


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## Esfa (Apr 15, 2007)

Yup, conditioned them, introduced her, got him flaring, took her out, he made a huge bubble nest, put her back in the next day in a jar so he couldn't reach her, left her there for about 2 hours, she barred up, let her out and she just swam around, two hours later she destroyed the next, so i took her out. :lol2:


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## HABU (Mar 21, 2007)

i would put mine in a tub about 2'x2' and about 3-4 inches deep with lots of bunched plants. put one male and 2-3 females that are ripe with eggs. make sure it is almost choked with plants. the male will begin his nest and the females can easily hide from him in the tangled mass. he can't chase them and he has more than one to focus on. the receptive female will allow him to mate and do her dead fish thing... after they have spawned, carefully remove the females and leave the male for a few days until all of the fry have hatched and have developed for a day or so then take the male out and most of the plants and raise the fry for about a week in the tub. that's how i have done it after much trial and error.


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## Mujician (Mar 7, 2007)

Berber King said:


> Dont keep them with guppys as their long tails can provoke fighters into thinking they are rivals.


Sorry - this is rubbish! - I kept loads of fighters with guppys myself - at the shop I used to work at we also kept them together (out of neccesity as there was nowhere else to put them!) With no bad consequences. Perfectly acceptable. A fighter thinking a guppy is a fighter is the same as you thinking that a gorilla is the same species!!!!!


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## Berber King (Dec 29, 2007)

What works in one tank may not work in another.Heavily planted tanks would offer enough cover to help prevent it as already mentioned in other posts.As for "this is rubbish",i too used to work in a shop and saw male bettas tear guppies tails apart with my own eyes.Just my personal experience,not gospel,but not "rubbish" as you so gracefully stated.:Na_Na_Na_Na:


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## Berber King (Dec 29, 2007)

And im not hairy enough to mistake a great ape for one of my own!:whistling2:


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## Savanna (Nov 27, 2007)

*Bettas*

I've been keeping Bettas of all different types for years. Been breeding them for about as long as well. In fact it pains me to remember I was selling on HM and PK stock while at Uni for a little extra cash. 

I have 6 tanks I am using for bettas at the moment. I have a large communal tank for the girls. A 4 foot tank divided in 6 partitions all filtered and planted for boys. Usually this sort of set up is known as a barracks. After that its a few small tanks with my halfmoon show bettas so they don't get damaged by breeding etc. 

I go along with the fact that very tank is different. Also depends where you are as well. I had a lot more success is spawning, especially in the number of raised fry, in another UK location than I have here and I haven't chaged anything except the water provider. 

I have a male in a large communial tank along with 8 females. The tank is well planted and thriving. I find from my experience this works well. the male chases one, then another etc etc. There are some many hiding and darting places due to the thickness of planting the poor blokes ends up chasing his own tail. 

I have had more problems keeping females togther even in the same set up as above. There always seems to be a dominent female in the tank especially around feeding time. Add any new females or if another current females gets fed up with being bossed around and its fin tear city! Females can often be as aggresive to each other until some kind of balance sorts itself out.

I am moving back into Halfmoon due to the silly prices they go for on Ebay. Although I prefer the charactor of Plakats they aren't as sort after. 

Guppies and Bettas can be a bad mix. I have seen people have problems with this. I just keep fighters so its not a problem I have to worry about.


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## RussianTort55 (Jun 9, 2007)

Mujician said:


> Sorry - this is rubbish! - I kept loads of fighters with guppys myself - at the shop I used to work at we also kept them together (out of neccesity as there was nowhere else to put them!) With no bad consequences. Perfectly acceptable. A fighter thinking a guppy is a fighter is the same as you thinking that a gorilla is the same species!!!!!


Lol i could say your statement is rubbish. I have had many bettas kill guppies. about the betta thinking a guppy is a rival i dont know, but they defo flare up around my guppies


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## _simon_ (Nov 27, 2007)

Mine lived happily with neons, catfish and a plec in a heavily planted tank.


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## PJP (Mar 18, 2010)

What's the minimum size tank i would need for a fighter to live with guppies? I have 4 guppies, 2 mollies and a red tail shark in a fairly new 60 gallon tank and at the moment they're all happy!


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## Connor_123 (Jan 15, 2009)

i had Betta's in my 3 and half foot tank with guppies. They would always eat the guppies tails.


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## PJP (Mar 18, 2010)

All of the opinions on this seem to be 50/50. I guess it depends on the individual fish and tank community!


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## axoemz (Mar 1, 2010)

bromley said:


> most aquatic shops ive been in to keep fighters with a range of fish ; guppies and tetras


Yeah i agree, in my local aquatics store they keeps fighters in with many different breed of fish


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## Trillian (Jul 14, 2008)

It's probably already been mentioned but IME Siamese Fighters shouldn't be kept with any other fish with flowing finnage (Angelfish, Guppies, Gouramis) etc. as the male can often mistake these for rival males and then...all hell breaks loose! :gasp:


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## andy007 (May 13, 2008)

Trillian said:


> It's probably already been mentioned but IME Siamese Fighters shouldn't be kept with any other fish with flowing finnage (Angelfish, Guppies, Gouramis) etc. as the male can often mistake these for rival males and then...all hell breaks loose! :gasp:


Agreed^^: victory:

People stating that it is perfectly fine to keep a male Betta with "this or that" fish are sorely mistaken. *Yes*, I know the strangest of community tanks have worked, and that people have kept Bettas with Guppies and the like, but I have also seen what a disaster it can be. For instance - a local shop had 5 male Bettas delivered on a Wednesday (I know cus I was in there at the time), on Saturday (3 days later) 1 had gone, 1 was OK as it was by itself, 1 was being destroyed by X-ray tetras, 1 had been ripped to shreds and lay dead in a Guppy tank, and the last one had no fins thanks to a couple of Rams. 

Its not just about whether the Betta will attack other fish, but more often about the other fish nipping the Betta. We've also had male Bettas that wont even tollerate snails or Oto's!

The only advice I would give is just to be prepared in case there are problems, and not to assume that because they have been fine for a month or two, that everything will be ok. Someone on our forum had a large community that included a male betta and some females, all ok for for month, then world war three broke out. Not only did he lose all the bettas, but due to the stress caused to other other fish he lost 50% of the stock. The females were shredding the male, the male was getting ratty at anything that moved. Stress = lowered immune system = increased liklihood of disease or illness.

Its funny really......as reptile keepers we wouldn't house reptiles together that naturally come from different environments, but are quite happy to house a generally solitary male betta from oxygen poor slow/still waters that are warmer than most other tropical waters, with shoaling fish from fast moving rivers that are some 8 degrees lower in temperature and with a completely different set of parameters (ph, alkalinity etc etc). If someone was keeping their Leos at 8 degrees lower than recommended, everyone would tell them to turn the heat up, so why the difference for fish? Keeping a Betta in a community where the other fish require temps of say 72, what do you do? If the temp is too low for the betta it may become slow, inactive and may have issues with its finnage like sticky fins. If the temp is made higher then oxygen levels in the water may drop, which may cause problems for other fish. 

Maybe its just because they are cheap, disposable and look pretty:whistling2:


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## PJP (Mar 18, 2010)

Well i've added a male fighter and another 2 mollies today and so far so good! The guppies get pretty close with no reaction. I have kept a close eye on them and had second 5-10 litre tank on standby but all seems to be ok for now! I'll watch them for the next couple of months. The temperature seems high enough (82F/28c) but i'm concerned about the filter/pump. Theres no dial and it seems to be quite powerful. Will the beta be ok in fast moving water?


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## andy007 (May 13, 2008)

PJP said:


> Theres no dial and it seems to be quite powerful. Will the beta be ok in fast moving water?


Cant say? All tanks are different and a lot depends on position of the filter outlet and the amount of plants/decor that will break the flow up. As long as there are quieter areas of the tank he should be ok.


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## cnella (Feb 24, 2010)

Each fish is different, but as has been said they are solitary and from slow moving oxygen depleted water. think if it was me i'd try and offer him a home more suited to his needs. probably be happier on his own in that other tank of yours. just my opinion but there seem to be split views on this topic. can't see it being worth the risk though, specially as you've got another tank sat there anyway.


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