tank mates!

[kiddomagic]

i will have a betta fish soon with tankmates! here:

1 betta
3 ghost shrimp
6 neon tetras

my tank will be a 10 gallon.
lightly planted.

will this work out?

[frogipoi]

No. Bettas love being alone and he may attack the tetras and shrimp so no.

[Welsh]

I have had male and female bettas with tetras and they all got along fine but every betta is different. If you really want them together then you could try it out, if they don't get along then you could seperate them or take the tetras back to the store and say they were incompatible with your betta. Ghost shrimp are known to be aggressive so you may want to make sure you have hiding places and plants for these and keep them fed with sinking food :)

[JamieTron]

it depends on how aggressive your betta is I had the exact same set up a long time ago with one of my old bettas and it worked okay (I did not have shrimp) I only had the 6 tetras and betta. The group of tetras are better because they will pay more attention to chasing each other rather than your betta.

[wallywestisthebest333]

Sounds good to me if it's not overstocked. you definately need to consider more plants though, so that everyone can hide. =] otherwise fish might be eaten/nipped.

[StarlessClay]

I've tried keeping bettas with tetras before including neons. Female bettas and plakats (short-finned bettas) did fine, but I had a lot of problems with long-finned male bettas being nipped by the tetras. If you do try it, make sure you have a backup plan for your betta in case it doesn't work out.

Also, bettas tend to chase small neon tetras so get the largest ones you can.

[JamieTron]

StarlessClay is right sometimes tetras can be nippers...though I have not had this problem myself yet. I nwo have a 29 gallon with several tetra types and they have been fine with my betta. I did have trouble with danios before I bought only two and they picked at my betta until I increased their school...now they don't bother him.

[Fermin]

Agree with the above in that tetras (and barbs) tend to be nippers, so they and your betta may have issues.

I have an elderly little scraggly runt of a betta who has a sweetheart temperment and has happily shared a heavily-planted 10g with pygmy cories and microrasboras.

One of my other bettas, though, would have committed mass-murder in that same tank. Just depends on their personalities. :)

[bettalover2033]

no not with the tetras in them. they are big nippers and they will either gang up on the betta or the betta will attack them. also if this is your first betta or you got a new one you should always give him or her time to settle in and then when he or she is settled get to know him or her before you start putting in suggestions that he probably wont like. Remember study him or her and see from a scale of 1-10. 1 meaning that he is way too harmless to even flare back at other rivals and 10 meaning that he flares at anything that walks by. BTW those are just examples. i only have 2 bettas that are an 8 in the scale, the rest are all 4's to 5's.

so please just learn his behavior because bettas are all different in many ways.:) im sure you'll love him or her even more after this:)

[kiddomagic]

ooh. i'm GETTING a betta soon.