I am going to start a sorority. My four Thai females came in the mail today, but I am suddenly worried. I have two pet store females that I plan to put in this sorority as well, but they seem noticeably smaller than the other four females. My fear is that they will get picked on. Is there a way around this? The tank is the picture I uploaded. There are tons of plants on the sides, plants in the middle, and vine-like plants in the front, back, and sides. So, will these two smaller girls be okay? I'm not sure that they will get much bigger. If not, I will probably forgo putting them i the sorority, but if it can work then that would be AWESOME. I guess my worry comes most from my boyfriend only liking one of the girls, and she happens to be one of the small ones. Since she's the only one that he likes, I would hate for them to hurt her too much. Pleaseee let me know if this will work. I'm crossing my fingers, but everyone is in their own bowl/jars until further notice.
I had giants, standard size females and very young females in my sorority and they used to do fine. I've found it's the personality rather than size of the females that dictates their place in the pecking order.
I've had one of the biggest females in my sorority be mercilessly bullied by some of the smallest, so I wouldn't worry too much.
Well, uhm...does it look like I do? Lol. I posted a full 3 side view of it in the tank pics thread, if that would be a better look. All of the plants are live plants, but I don't know if it looks full enough.
Plenty of places to hide, I think you'll be fine. I have two big (okay, three months old girls) and four tiny ones in a sorority right now and they're friendly as heck. And before they were, they just found a hiding spot till they felt it was safe to come out. But I lucked out with friendly girls, no real chasing or biting and no damage to any of them .
Good luck with your girls though =) I'll look forward to pictures, I love your tank's set up.
I have put Juviniles in with giant adults and never had issues.
Maybe release the smaller ones first and then the larger/older ladies? I never really had aggression - even when one of the "ladies" I got from petco turned out to be a very young male and grew up into a rather large VT adult
here is my 20G for comparison
When it was all fake plants
Thanks! I'll be acclimating them tonight! I looked them all over. I would keep them in hospital tanks for much longer, but I'm low on heaters (okay, I'm out at this point). All of them are active and happy girlies. I uploaded some super low grade pics of the girls in the betta fish pictures thread. None of them have nipped tails and all of them are girls despite their large fins(one was very eggy and all ovipositors were found). Yes, I'm proud of their large fins. :P
The sorority I just set up is the first time I put girls in that were different sizes. I was terrified the runt would get bullied. Turns out she was the most agressive & the fastest swimmer. I had to take out two girls to put in QT because she nipped their fins. Now the runt is swimming with the two bigger girls with no fear, like she's as big as they are, lol.
So, your little ones may do fine or surprise you & end up being the alpha girl.
I definitely feel better now that I see these girls in the tank together. Watching them acclimate next to each other was like a nightmare. My boyfriend was watching and he kept saying things like if one of the girls killed his favorite one, then he'd kill them all. Which made things worse for me of course. Well, joke's on him. His favorite, the smallest, doesn't seem to care and she just swims everywhere. Looks like size doesn't really matter. I did the whole, release the lest aggressive ones first thing. That worked REALLY well, and they aggression just so happened to go by size as well (or so it seemed). So glad things worked out well. WHEW.
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