I was just wondering for future reference, can you seperate a male and female betta using one of those dividers at the pet stores. Would it make them act weird and try to attack/mate all day or would they still be normal? Just wondering in case I ever get snowflake a little girlfreind.
BTW, do different breeds (crowntail, halfmoon, regular, etc.) mate or only the same.
Yes, you can put a male and female in a divided tank. Just make sure that the divider is secure so they can't get through it or jump over it. And yes, different tail types can be bred to each other.
Well breeding a halfmoon to a veil teil is going to give you veil tails, or maybe a few deltas in there. That's why you don't really see 'half breeds.' Combtails are about the only easily identifiable mix of the tail types. They are all of course capable of being interbred, they're all betta splendens. Just like all household dogs are canis familiaris, whether they be german shepard or poodles, they can still interbreed.
And a lot of the more rare types you won't see in your LFS because they aren't going to buy a $50-200 fish just to stick it in one of those tiny cups where it is just as likely to die as the other bettas they. Too much of a potential loss of profit. To find a lot of those sorts of bettas, you'd probably have to either find a local breeder if there is one, or go online and find one (Aquabid is a great place to look at all the wonderful colors and types of bettas that are being bred out there).
You can divide the tank and the fish will be able to entertain themselves by seeing each other. I've yet to keep males and females next to each other, but the female may develop eggs, but that shouldn't be a problem, if she doesn't breed she'll just drop the unfertilized eggs, or reabsorb them. The male will probably flare and try to court her, and build a bubblenest, but that's not really unusual behavoir. Or he may show no interest at all. I've heard of some males that show no real interest in some females. "Sorry babe, you're just not my type." xD
Yeah, its possible to divide the males and female with a divider. I've done it before, with a ten gallon aquarium. It worked pretty well, but I did see a change in behavior. The divider was clear, so they could see eachother. They were always flairing at eachother, to the point where I substituted an opaque piece of plastic for the original clear divider piece just so they would leave eachother alone.
If you choose to divide the fish, be careful when you're doing maintenance. There were several times that after I cleaned the tank, the divider wasn't fully secure. One of the bettas would slip through the crack and fight with the other. It never got deadly, but my male was pretty beat up.
But, if you're looking to mate them, one time when the female got onto the male's side, I walked in on them mating. Apparently one of my friends has ben trying forever to get his bettas to mate, and mine breeded on accident. I don't know if it was because they could see eachother, but it could have been. And yes, different types of bettas will breed with eachother, so you can have mixed breeds.
Neons are schooling fish, I'm not sure why you'd want to separate them? They work best in schools of at lest five anyhow, so not sure what good splitting them up would be. If you want a 10 gallon split to keep a betta on one side, and neons on the other so the betta couldn't get to them, I suppose that could work?
I want a betta on both sides of the divider, but I already have neons in there. So I dunno if I should split them or keep them on one side, seems like it would be kinda cramped.
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