empty 3ft

[windfire]

hey guys sooooo i have an empty 3ft with stand lying around and as i might be moving back to the commune i'm thinking its time to set it up, of coarse i gota get the bottom pane fixed first but thats easy and will do it when i get this months pocket money. now i have 2 options, a sorority or getting a halfmoon male... i really dont know which way to go with this. i will probably use khuli's and cherry shrimp as cleaners but the fish stocking question is a really hard one. i've always wanted a halfmoon and theres one store about an hour away from that sometimes stocks them so it would be a definate option, then theres a store not far from the commune that has sometimes got double and delta tails so they could be an option as well. having bought Ares and put him in the tank that was going to house the halfmoon i so badly wanted i feel i owe it to myself to get the halfmoon, but then again a soroity could be fun. my other option is to split the tank 80/20 and have a male in the smaller side and the sority in the larger side. unfortunately my interest has also been pricked by paludriums at the moment and natural tanks and a way of combining the two to replace a conventional filter.... as you can see i'm in a wee bit of a pickle. i have another empty 1ft aswell but i'm trying to keep it simple seeing as its not my home. i suppose that would mean using the 1ft lol. so what you guys think?

[LittleBettaFish]

I had the same problem with my 3ft tank. Originally, I was going to divide it into four for my males, and incorporate some kind of bank with reeds, ferns and other emersed plants. Then I was thinking of a sorority, but the possibility of having to provide separate housing if it didn't work out wasn't feasible for me. So now I've decided to get a group of wild bettas (probably uberis) and make it a biotope with lots of driftwood snares, fallen leaf litter, dark, murky water etc.

With sororities there's always the possibility the females won't get along and you'll have to separate some or all of them into their own individual tanks. The only one you'd have to separate out in a community tank would be the halfmoon male. Therefore, I guess it depends on how much room you have available if you do need to set up further tanks, and how willing you are to get through the initial bumps and scrapes of a sorority.

Personally, a paludarium based biotope with the halfmoon male and some shrimp would look really nice. You'd probably just need to get a lid cut to keep in the humidity if you were growing plants emersed.

[windfire]

yeah depending on what mood i'm in i lean sorority, male, palludrium and back again lol. if i went with the paludrium i'd probably have a bank type setup with a few ferns and some low growing marsh plants. maybe a small waterfall, i'll have to sort through my wood pile to find something suitable. hmmm love designing new tanks