sorority or small community

[TayHudson]

Since I bought my tiny girl Lilla last week, I've wanted to get maybe one or two more females to add with her. I've been reading thru some threads on here trying to get an idea if its something I really want to do.

She's only an 1" and so very tiny. I got her from Petco and I know they have other females that are around the same size as her.

But I've also wondered......I have my male Simon in my 20 long planted tank along with some snails and ghost shrimp. I was considering putting him in my 10, and putting Lilla in the 20 if I do decide to get more females.

Alsooooo, I've wondered what other community fish would be an option to put in with her. If I keep her in the 10.

Any help would be awesome :)

[JKfish]

Well, if you decide to do a sorority, four is the bare minimum. either way, you could do a sorority in a ten or a twenty. In the twenty, you could have ten girls or so, or maybe four girls mixed in with community fish, or just your girl and a community.

In a ten gallon, I personally do not advise schooling fish. I've got harlequin rasboras in 10 gallon, and I'm trying to get a twenty so they can have more room to swim. However, cories and otos would be okay in there along with a few girls if you wanted some fish other than bettas in the tank.

[Adastra]

I think she'd do well with a school of eight pygmy cories in the ten. They're very small, so you can fit more in than other species of cory catfish or minnows, for that matter. Just make sure that you add them slowly so that your bacterial colony is not overwhelmed and has time to grow as you stock your tank.

Sororities are risky--if you don't have the means to house every girl you put in the tank separately in case things don't work out, then it's not a good idea. Sometimes you get a group of females that simply can't adapt to a social situation. Bettas are generally solitary fish, so they don't necessarily do well when we impose an enclosed social environment on them, so there is always a risk of injury or death.

You can take certain precautions to minimize this risk, such as getting a large quantity of females in order to disperse the aggression (so the same betta isn't getting beaten up all the time), filling the tank to the brim with plants and decor (VERY important), doing a proper fishless cycle on the tank at the beginning so all the females can be added at once, and rearranging the decor often to break up territories, especially when a new fish is added. You should definitely research multiple sources on how to establish and maintain a sorority before you go further.

A community tank, on the other hand, would be easier to establish and you wouldn't constantly be worrying and counting your bettas to make sure that one hasn't decided to kill another that day.