Betta Fish Forum banner

Seven gallon long?

2K views 17 replies 6 participants last post by  Tamyu 
#1 ·
I now have a nice seven gallon long tank for my girl. :) She is becoming more and more attractive as time goes by - she was kind of a cream with some greenish iridescence when I got her, but now she is very clearly lavender with blue green iridescence.

Anyway, I am pondering what to do with the tank. She is not very active - she hangs out in one part of the tank and never even goes to the other end. I feed her at that corner, so I guess she never wants to leave it. She will actually wait there if I drop food in somewhere else as the slight current from the filter eventually carries it to her. She is a lazy little lady.:lol:

It is too small for a sorority, so I am debating whether to get a few tank mates or split it in half and get another female. I also considered moving her to the 3.5 gallon the male is in and putting a divider in to get another male, but he is used to his home and settled in so I don't want to move him...

Any ideas? My LFS is pushing tetras and panda cories because the tank shape gives a lot of swimming space. I would like to see something moving around lower in the tank.
 
#2 ·
Hey there, welcome to the forums. And wow you're from Japan? Lovely place.

First off 7g can house no other fish friends. Maybe some shrimps and a snail, but I would say no to other fishy friends.

If you choose not to add shrimps/snails, dividing it could let you house two Bettas. If you're male Betta is comfy in his 3.5g I wouldn't move him, get another female, I'm not sure if a male and female sharing a tank would be a great idea. I have no knowledge if they can share a divided tank peacefully or not, the female might get eggy and the male might blow bubble nests like crazy.

If you would like some other critters moving about, a snail and some shrimps are a good idea. :) Ghost shrimps are inexpensive, if your Betta doesn't eat them as snacks get more pretty ones like Red Cherry Shrimps, etc. As for snails, I would get a Nerite snail, they can't reproduce in freshwater only brackish water, and I believe they stay smaller than an Apple snail.
 
#3 ·
What is your water like in terms of pH and hardness? Normally I would say no to other fish, but if it is super long I reckon it could cope with the bioload of a trio of male Endlers Livebearers. They do much better in hard water, though. 6 pygmy cories might be another option, but only if it really does have a huge footprint (you'd need live plants and extra water changes to cope with the bioload, too). Could you give us the dimensions?
 
#4 ·
The tank is 50cm x 22cm x 25cm. It is a 28 liter tank, so a bit over 7 gallons.
It was designed for killifish or minnows, to give them a lot of space to swim.
The filter is rated to 15 gallons (but I have it on the lowest setting right now so it doesn't make too much of a current).

My water is fairly neutral, around 7.0. I am not sure of the exact hardness, but it is more hard than soft. (Deposits form over time.)

The big problem with Endlers is that they just don't sell them here. :lol: Guppies are the only I have seen on sale.
 
#5 ·
I don't think the footprint is long enough to house Pygmy Cories (but I may be wrong!). And plus you said you don't have any Endlers so booo, Guppies, eh, most people say no. Because they have long pretty tails and to a male Betta that means another male Betta is right there. So they're will be fin nipping and possible deaths.

:l So, yeah, I would go with shrimps, start off with the cheap ones first, if your Betta eats them then you can only have snails. (And some Bettas eat snails too).
 
#7 ·
Aww, too bad. Those pygmy cories are so cute too. :)
I will have to get another tank so I can have some... Or maybe try to find something that can live in the bottom of my white cloud minnow tank.

I will look into shrimp, but all the ones I can find here have their habitat temperatures listed as between 20 and 25C. I keep my betta tank at around 27. (And it will go even higher in summer.) I hear shrimp are very sensitive to temperature, so it looks like they would be a no go?

Looking around, I was able to find Endlers, but they only sell them in pairs and for a whopping US$30 each... :shock:
 
#9 ·
If only you were... But it would probably cost you three times more for the shipping, so would end up costing the same in the end. :lol:

Here they are on my absolute favorite online site for fish and supplies: http://www.shopping-charm.jp/ItemDetail.aspx?tid=05&catId=1312303000&itemId=18637

I have been looking at short tail guppies as an option - they look to be the same size as the Endlers, and are (according to the site) pretty much just a variation of the same fish. Here they are:
http://www.shopping-charm.jp/ItemDetail.aspx?tid=05&catId=1312303000&itemId=17442

What I really need to get someone to send to me is a freshwater master kit. They only sell the individual tests here, and each one is about US$25. To gather all the basic ones it is outrageous...
 
#12 ·
Outrageous, isn't it? I stick with the cheap (well, cheaper) sticks for most everything, and then take samples to the local fish shop for more detailed analysis every so often. They will even run it through a little computerized thing and give me a print out if I pay a tiny fee! The sticks may not be accurate on the details, but they do tell me if something is off.
Drives me crazy to have people tell me to go out and pick up a master kit. If they sold them, and they were the same price as they are in the US I most definitely would!

The short tail guppies look like endler/guppy hybrids. I may be wrong, though . . .
They are wild type guppies, and from what I understand Endlers were developed from that strain of wild guppies. So they are sort of the ancestors of the Endler type. A bit less flashy, fallen out of popularity, and a lot cheaper (here, at least).
 
#11 ·
The short tail guppies look like endler/guppy hybrids. I may be wrong, though . . .
 
#13 ·
The original is the black bar endler. They were that flashy in the wild, endlers are their own species (Poecillia wingei). They are no longer found in the wild, supposedly due to habitat destruction, I believe the origins were in veneuzuela. That fish probably came from endlers or endler x's..

Have you tried online for a master test kit? Like maybe eBay has a deal? I had to pay $50 for mine, I know, it's so ridiculous. If you can get to a fish store often enough though there isn't that much of a problem though.
 
#14 ·
The original is the black bar endler. They were that flashy in the wild, endlers are their own species (Poecillia wingei). They are no longer found in the wild, supposedly due to habitat destruction, I believe the origins were in veneuzuela. That fish probably came from endlers or endler x's..
It seems I was misinformed on the Endlers. Here, they are considered completely a variety of guppy - and I guess they really are, at least according to Wikipedia?

The short tailed guppies I linked to are not linked to Endlers at all, they are just a variety of wild guppy. They do sell guppies derived from Endlers (mixed), but they cost a bit more.

Have you tried online for a master test kit? Like maybe eBay has a deal? I had to pay $50 for mine, I know, it's so ridiculous. If you can get to a fish store often enough though there isn't that much of a problem though.
I have, but while there are often shipping deals to other places, pretty much never to Japan. I would have to pay as much in shipping to get it to me as it would cost to buy everything separate.
 
#15 ·
That sucks :/ well as long as your fish store does it that's fine. If you got big time into fish then it'd be worth it, but for a few tanks, meh :p
They are really close genetically and in area. But they breed true, I like to consider them separate, they're so different looking. The endler is getting rare in the wild, if not impossible to find, so they should be protected as a species.
Did you consider dividing and getting two betta instead?
 
#16 ·
Did you consider dividing and getting two betta instead?
I have thought about it, but I would rather not divide. If I had my male in this tank (and if he didn't seem so settled in to his current tank), I would have thought a bit more strongly about it... But it is my girl in this tank, so I want her to still have room to swim around if she desires. I guess I could divide it and get another female, but it would feel kind of weird. I would rather wait and try a sorority someday in a larger tank.

For some reason I am way more attached to the female I bought sort of on a whim to go with the male than I am to the male himself. Especially after I almost lost her a couple days ago when she jumped and dried on a piece of cardboard... :|
 
#18 ·
Thanks - but I didn`t end up losing her. She just scared me a lot. She jumped out of the tank and managed to get wedged in the folded cardboard I have between her tank and the male's. I tore the area up searching for her, and eventually found her but she was sort of dried to the paper. I peeled her off carefully and put her back in her tank.

She looked bad for a day or two, but is now completely healed up and going strong. I decided to rethink putting anything in with her because she has gotten pretty feisty and is a pretty aggressive girl. She flares three times as much as my male... She can see a tiny reflection of herself in a silver sticker on the filter, and will flare at it like crazy if she goes over there.

So if I do a community with a betta, I think it will be when I get a larger tank and can move my male to it. :-D

Thanks to everyone who did offer me advice.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top