LPS And Female Bettas

[WhiskeyHands]

I was at my LPS, fish section and happened to see a fish tank overcrowded with female bettas. Aren't they supposed to fight? Like i know about the sorority thing but you know how small the fish tanks that display fish are kind of small and there were about 50 bettas maybe even more inside. I don't get it, someone explain?

[Kithy]

They weren't fighting, hurt or sick looking? Very odd o.O

[WhiskeyHands]

No just swimming everywhere and were all excited. Just very agitated

[aemaki09]

Could be that they were all young and from the same spawn. Otherwise I dont have a clue what to think.

[carbonxxkidd]

I saw someone else post on here recently that their LFS just doesn't really care about the well being of their bettas - they treat them the same as feeder fish. Maybe that's what's going on?

It's also possible that the fish you saw were all raised together from the time they were very young so they are just used to each other? I don't know...I've never seen crowded betta tanks around here :/

[WhiskeyHands]

oh maybe they were young and from the same spawn as aemaki is saying, they were kind of small and thank you carbon.
But just wondering do they become aggresive towards each other or can they be kept together if they are from the same spawn?

[Option]

Having a successful sorority myself I can say, more often than not, when you put more females together it ends up being better than just placing a few (< 4) together. Their aggression is spread out thin among all the members such that no single female gets too much abuse (i.e., fin nipped, bitten).

Though obviously at LPS they just put all of them together b/c of the lack of space, rather than for the reason I mentioned above.

[Olympia]

They have better things to worry about than killing each other. They are in a high stress environment and are probably too freaked out to actually do anything.

[aemaki09]

Originally Posted by WhiskeyHands

oh maybe they were young and from the same spawn as aemaki is saying, they were kind of small and thank you carbon.
But just wondering do they become aggresive towards each other or can they be kept together if they are from the same spawn?

They probably would end up becoming aggressive eventually. For that many of them they need more space and a ton of hiding spaces. But there are a lot of people on here that keep successful sororities, some with less cover than others so it's entirely possible that if it was a smaller number they could live without too much aggression.
I myself keep a 26 gallon tank with 10 females. I guess you could consider it heavily planted, but it's a tall tank so there is plenty of swimming room at the top, most of my girls spend 80% of their time up there with the other girls and there's not too much aggression, some showing off and some chasing when they get too far into the dominant girls territory but that's it.

[nataliey]

Sorority imo is where female bettas live together which is fine and as said above by Option the more females the better.

I currently have a 100 UK litre fish tank with 30+ females all living together happily, the more the merrier i say.

Dominance has been sorted out between them and top female betta keeps them all in line.
Heres my sorority, ignore the water marks please:

Thats not the whole tank cant get in as the fish tank is behind the christmas tree!