Male and Female in same community?

[Juicebox]

Hi

I have a 14 gallon tank with no fish in it yet. i was wondering is it possible to keep 1 male and 1 female in this 1 tank long term with some other species of fish/adfs in it?

or if i go the sorrority route is it possible to keep 1 male in with 5 females and a couple adfs or shrimp?

[LebronTheBetta]

Nope. Males and females can't be with each other. They'll fight to the death or breed. Who knows if the females would gang up in him. You can only have them together if you keep them in a pond or something. There is no buts or ifs. Either way, there's a chance of stress. And you won't want that..

[Juicebox]

ok,thank you very much for the reply,really appreciated

[emeraldmaster]

if it is any help, my cousin is currently keeping a 3" long veil tail male and his 1" long sister in the same tank (10 gallon long). they are completely stress free and have been like this for months. so it is possible but under certain circumstances. if you really desire to do this, try to find sibblings, than they are already used to each other. the fish in her tank developed a (sorority like) agreement, the male can do as he wishes but if the female looks at him, he swims away. hope this helped!

[LadyVictorian]

Well even if they are siblings they can still attack each other. Also I would tell your cousin to be cautious. Fish can be peaceful for months then one month you wake up and one has killed the other in the night. Same think happened to my uncles sharks. They were fine for 2 years and one day the females killed the male.

[ChoclateBetta]

2 Bettas should never be kept together except breeding 14 gallons is not a big tank by hobby standards anything below 30 is small I have heard of it working in 50 gallons.

[Oldfishlady]

While it is not recommend to keep a male and females together long term, it can be done. As Emeraldmaster posted, you might have better luck with siblings, however, as Ladyvictorian posted, things can still go wrong really fast. Usually it is the female that destroy the male-more than the male destroying the female-but this also depends on the setup and the individual Bettas themselves.

[ChoclateBetta]

I have read it takes giant tanks.

[Oldfishlady]

In my personal experience with keeping unrelated- male and female/s together-I have been successful with heavy planted 10gal with a single male and a couple of females.
In 20gals heavy planted-I have successfully kept a single male with 6-8 females.
In my 75gal heavy planted-is an on-going project/experiment with keeping multi males and females.

However, I do want to stress-that while it can be done in some cases-I do not recommend new keepers to attempt it. It doesn't work with any setup or any Betta....Lots of things can go wrong and its not worth risking injury or death.

[ChoclateBetta]

And you might have the wrong Betta for the setup.