After Christmas I plan on making some bin cages for my hammys which will free up my 10 gallon for a sorority. It will be a NPT, with tons of hiding spots. I plan on putting about 6 girls in there or so, as well as a mystery snail and a couple shrimp... is that too much? What are some things I need to know about sororities?
...If I could form a well put together conscious thought right now I'd tell you everything you need to know.... but I can't. lol
As for what I can think of right now, 6 females is probably the perfect number... I've seen functioning sororities in a 10 gallon with as many as 8 females. I've read that overstocking is better than understocking when it comes to betta females, because the more there are, the more the aggression is spread out.
Make sure you quarantine all of your girls for about 3 weeks before putting them together, to minimize any spread of disease. Once you're ready to add them to the tank, add the least aggressive first, then the next least, and so on and so forth to the most aggressive. That's what I've read, but it doesn't make much of a difference with my sorority.
The first couple of weeks will SUCK. Mainly because they're still getting used to one another and are still fighting for their places in the pecking order. Mine used to have an established order... then I added Sora, and it blurred a bit. I have no idea who's dominant anymore. lol... Definitely keep an eye on them during this period, and make sure nobody gets seriously injured.
If one of your females decides to be a little... you know... and continues to fight everyone else after roughly a 2 week period, you might need to give her a little "time out" for a day or two, then re-introduce her. Daiquiri pulled that with me. And momma doesn't take that from fish. Came back with her tail (figuratively) between her fins and actually let the sorority function.
Uhm... All my plants are silk and plastic so I have no advice when it comes to real plants.
As for more stuff, I can continue this tomorrow if I think of anything else. Hope this helps a bit though!
Sorry for asking a question in a thread, but in a sorority, can you mix FM betta types (e.g. CT, VT, HM, DT, PK, etc.)?
Do have to add them all at once? If you move all the decor around before you add a new one, the aggression wont be as bad, they will get really confused, giving the new one enough time to "catch up".
I have a sorority with mixed tail types (5 Veiltails, with 2 Crowntails, 2 Plakats, 1 Doubletail, and 1 halfmoon) and there's no issue there. If you're planning a planted tank, I would recommend planting first and letting it grow out (If you're patient) or getting silk plants and gradually replacing them individually with real plants so that you can keep your hiding places mostly intact while allowing your plants to acclimate and grow. The problem with adding shrimp to a sorority is that it only takes 1 of your females to be a shrimp eater to wipe out your shrimp colony so I recommend ghost shrimp because they're decent sized and super cheap so there's no disappointment if one of your girls gets hungry.
Thats the only kind I can get around here... lol. They are like 75 cents
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