Individual Or Community Tank?

[RandomWiktor]

I prefer individual tanks; I just don't see any benefit to keeping a territorial, solitary species whose care needs differ from most other fish in a community tank. Seems like you'd have to compromise the betta's or its tankmate's comfort to some degree just so they could stay together, not to mention the obvious risk of the betta attacking other fish, or the betta being fin-nipped.
I do not think bettas have a diminished quality of life from not being kept with other fish, and frankly most other species from the betta's natural habitat are wild caught - you want to talk ethical issues, talk about fish who are completely wild being ripped from their natural habitat, dying in massive numbers in transport and in stores just so we can watch them flit around an aquarium for a few years before they inevitably succumb pre-maturely to the stresses of captivity. Just so a betta can have some stimulation from tank mates? Why not just provide a stimulating environment, quality nutrition, toys (yes, bettas enjoy toys), and viewing through the glass of other fish so they can get worked out without hurting or being hurt.
I do not keep my bettas in 1g tanks, nor do I personally ((as in, people with smaller tanks don't jump on, because I don't jump on you so long as it's at least 1g, heh)) believe in keeping them in anything less than 5g. If I had the space and money, all of my boys would each have a 10g tank. However, to run a sanctuary for fish who would otherwise be dead thanks to the callousness of the pet trade, or owners who don't care enough to provide them with what they need, I need to stick to tanks I can do 100% WC's on with ease - so 5g tanks it is. Everyone is active, healthy, in good fin, well-stimulated, and seem pretty happy.

 

[nmonks]

I think it's interesting to see the spread of opinions here. Some people keep bettas singly, others in community tanks. My personal experience is that keeping bettas, especially females bettas, in community tanks is not difficult provided some care is taken. You wouldn't keep discus in a Rift Valley cichlid tank, and by the same token, simply because a betta can only be kept with certain tankmates doesn't stop it being a potential community fish. If you were keeping tankmates for discus, you'd choose the right species, and likewise with bettas.

I can see the pros and cons to both points of view, I just personally enjoy seeing my fish interact with one another. I don't have an issue with people keeping bettas in 5 gallon tanks. What I have a problem with are "betta jars" and the like. What worries me is that the line between a living, thinking creature and a biological ornament has been blurred. We've created an animal that is more violent than its ancestors and less able to swim or interact with its environment, like those munchkin cats.

Cheers,

Neale

RandomWiktor: According to the FAO, over 90% of aquarium fish are farmed. So the vast majority of gouramis, angels, neons, platies, plecs, and so on are just as used to captive life as bettas. Besides, in theory at least, collecting wild caught fish can provide a sustainable source of hard currency for native peoples in the tropics for a crop that demands that the local environment is maintained properly. On the other hand, I'm not 100% convinced that all collection has hitherto been sustainable, particularly on a few of the coral reefs (particularly the Philippines) where cyanide has been used.

 

[jollysue]

Off topic But my fronts are food fish in their native habitat. Would they be better on a plate?

Oh, dear!!! A new debate.

One more side comment. There are well respected and honorable fish hobbiests who don't share some of their experiences and some of their knowledge, because of the flap that would stir up. Some subjects are avoided because other member's feelings on the subject are so strong.

Now I on the other hand I am just as glad that we don't do fish fighting here. With all respect Cracker you probably treat your fish with more respect than many.

Oh, my! Could I stray any more off topic? I must be tired. I am looking at a 17+ hour day. sigh

 

[dwarfgourami]

I think it's interesting to see the spread of opinions here. Some people keep bettas singly, others in community tanks. My personal experience is that keeping bettas, especially females bettas, in community tanks is not difficult provided some care is taken.


My understanding is that the members who prefer keeping bettas singly are talking about male bettas, and that the general consensus on the betta forum tends to be to recommend keeping female bettas in community or at least sorority tanks.

 

[OohFeeshy]

You wouldn't keep discus in a Rift Valley cichlid tank, and by the same token, simply because a betta can only be kept with certain tankmates doesn't stop it being a potential community fish. If you were keeping tankmates for discus, you'd choose the right species, and likewise with bettas.

That's part of the whole point though. Ther is no guarentee which fish, if any, a betta will not attack. Some bettas are fine with all fish (a very rare few). Some only attack brightly coloured fish. Some are fine with brightly coloured fish but take unkindly to cories, etc etc. And then theres the vice versa- some fish you may not think as nippers will find the long, colourful finnage to good an oppertunity to miss. Discus are a bad example- their only real qualm is water quality/conditions.

I can see the pros and cons to both points of view, I just personally enjoy seeing my fish interact with one another.

Unfortunately with bettas the only 'interaction' you get is aggression. Again, problems.

What I have a problem with are "betta jars" and the like.

And so do we, although some definitions get a bit blurred (eg, some people saying it's prefectly OK to keep a betta in a 4" wide, 2ft high vase becasue it holds over 2.5g or similar)

We've created an animal that is more violent than its ancestors and less able to swim or interact with its environment, like those munchkin cats.

Whish, sadly, we've done with many creatures, not only fish. It's too late to reverse it, true wild, pure blood splendens are almost impossible to fidn in the wild, and although attempts are being made to breed more in captivity, I'm not sure it will be enough. For now, the best equivalent are other wilds like smarags (I have three and they are not at all aggressive, or much like splendens at all).

 

[starrynightxxi]

Bettas can interact with other fish in ways other than aggression, and small amounts of aggression are not harmful, otherwise we wouldn't let our fish flare at themselves in mirrors or males/females in neighboring tanks.

We've also heard plenty of accounts where bettas seem to befriend other fish in their tanks. These bonds may be looser and are perhaps less understood than our own friendships, but they are known to exist and are certainly not hurting the fish any.

However, there is a great deal of care that needs to be taken when considering tankmates. certainly bettas will do best with fish that won't want the same territory as them (surface), and fish who are quick and/or [potentially] nippy, or who want high currents will do poorly with a [longfinned] betta of most any personality. If those things have been considered then the only issue is the individual fish's personalities which as has often been noted can change from animal to animal.

The spread of disease does not concern me. This is often used as a reason not to keep multiple bettas in a divided tank, or bettas in communities, but it is accepted that a properly cared for aquarium should rarely if ever have to be medicated. If one fish in the tank were to get sick, then the rules that apply for any community apply for bettas. I haven't found them any harder to medicate (when properly diagnosed) than any other fish, and actually easier than some.

 

[nmonks]

No, I meant more than just between members of their own species. For example, today I was watching cardinal tetras steal crumbs from a red-tail pufferfish chomping on mussel. I have two species of halfbeak in one tank continually trying to size one another up. They don't fight but they do stare and try to figure out whether to attack or ignore the other species. My glassfish and silver hatchets chase each other all the time, and the South American puffers steal food from one another and any tetra that doesn't swallow a bit of prawn or mussel quickly enough. All good, clean fun that helps the fish not get bored in what must be a rather dull existence otherwise.

Neale

I can see the pros and cons to both points of view, I just personally enjoy seeing my fish interact with one another.

Unfortunately with bettas the only 'interaction' you get is aggression. Again, problems.

 

[RandomWiktor]

RandomWiktor: According to the FAO, over 90% of aquarium fish are farmed. So the vast majority of gouramis, angels, neons, platies, plecs, and so on are just as used to captive life as bettas. Besides, in theory at least, collecting wild caught fish can provide a sustainable source of hard currency for native peoples in the tropics for a crop that demands that the local environment is maintained properly. On the other hand, I'm not 100% convinced that all collection has hitherto been sustainable, particularly on a few of the coral reefs (particularly the Philippines) where cyanide has been used.

I'd be interested to see the source of that figure, as many of the fish protection institutes I've subscribed to state collection for the pet trade as a major source of depletion for many aquarium fish species. And, while fish farming is better than wild capture, it is noteworthy that it, too, can come at a significant cost.
I'm not sure if the farming of fish for the pet trade is similar to the farming of fish for the meat trade, but we've had terrible problems in the US with fish farms for a few reasons. Some of the issues include the spread of parasites and diseases into our waterways from having so many fish confined in one area, often under less than ideal conditions; the introduction of non-native species to the environment; the introduction of genetically inferior specimins to native fish stock; the seepage of anti-biotics and anti-parasitics used to keep the fish healthy into our waterways; the killing of native fish-eating wildlife (ie. herons, eagles, otters) to protect the farmed fish; and of course the obvious issue that many farms overcrowd to maximize profit, which pre-disposes the fish to poor health after the stress of shipping to pet stores.
Furthermore, while many fish are captive bred, few are actually domesticated - that is, changed physically and behaviorally from their wild form over many years to become tame and reliant on humans. Goldfish, bettas, fancy guppies, and other species that are easily bred in captivity have been heavily domesticated, and are often tame and not particularly stressed by captivity. On the other hand, a captive-bred but completely undomesticated species raised in some remote farm who was one day plucked up and placed in an aquarium is more likely to suffer the health consequences resulting from the stress of captivity.

I'm probably sounding really anti-fishkeeping atm... my bad. I'm not bashing people who keep farmed or wild caught, though personally I would keep nothing but domesticated species (not just captive bred) unless it came to me from another home. I just was wondering if fish farming for the pet trade was similarly harmful as fish farming for the meat trade. Either way, I strongly prefer farming over wild capture, as pretty much every species humanity has ever sourced directly and continuously from the wild for any significant industry has in the end wound up endangered.

Wow, sorry; very off topic. I'll shut up now, even if someone replies to refute anything I've said. ::zips lips:: Didn't mean to turn this into an O/T debate.

What I have a problem with are "betta jars" and the like. What worries me is that the line between a living, thinking creature and a biological ornament has been blurred. We've created an animal that is more violent than its ancestors and less able to swim or interact with its environment, like those munchkin cats.

Absolutely - I agree on all points there. I hate the fact that people think of bettas as decorations (as you can probably tell from my ava), just like I also do not like the breeding of bettas with heavy finnage and hyper-agressive dispositions; it lowers the quality of life significantly in my mind. In fact, though I only keep domesticated species, I have some major beefs with what people have done to animals through breeding. I'm sick of seeing dogs and cats with faces so squashed they can't breathe properly, horses with pencil-thin legs that fracture just from running, goldfish with stupidly round bodies who inevitably develop swimbladder disease, etc.

 

[nmonks]

Well, the source of the 90% quote is a document called "Responsible Ornamental Fisheries" by Devin Bartley at the Fishery Resources Division of the Food & Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The statistic is used to contrast freshwater with marine ornamental fish trades:

According to Dr Kevan Main of Harbor Branch Oceongraphic Institution, the majority (> 90 percent) of freshwater ornamental fish are captive bred whereas only about 25 of 8,000 marine ornamental species can be easily raised.

If you think about the trade globally, most fishkeepers are keeping freshwater fish, and most of those are keeping a handful of species: goldfish, koi, guppies, neons, angels, mollies, gouramis, danios, peppered and bronze catfish. These are all captive bred, in the case of goldfish and koi, for hundreds of years. Wild-caught fish are a relatively small part of the freshwater hobby.

You are absolutely right about the hazards of fish-farming. This holds for both ornamental and food fish. Shrimp farming has been a massive problem in Asia because it requires brackish water pools to be created in freshwater areas, and salmon farming has caused problems in Europe when parasites and diseases get loose and infect wild salmon and trout. Farmed American crayfish in England are at least in part to blame for the near-extinction of the native crayfish. There isn't a big tropical fish farming industry in Europe because of the climate, but coldwater ornamental fish imports (e.g. from China and the US) have been severely limited because of the risk those species could get loose.

There's a big ethics issue in fishkeeping a lot of people don't consider. I'm not going to repeat what I wrote in the Wikipedia article but basically I agree, simply because wild-caught fish can be a sustainable resource doesn't mean they will be exploited sustainably.

On the flip side, it's certainly possible for aquarists to be supplied with wild-type fish from fish farms. Why not have angelfish that look like wild angelfish? Why not have guppies that are as hardy and variable as wild guppies? Why not breed bettas that are robust and equipped with normal fins, like their wild ancestors? Personally, I don't like that the hobby insists on producing balloon mollies instead of green sailfin mollies, or veil-tail albino angels instead of real angels. None of these so-called improvements do much for me!

Cheers,

Neale

 

[dthoffsett]

I keep two bettas in a divided 10gal tank. They can see each other through plants on either side of the divider, and although they occasionally flare at each other mostly they either ignore one another, or hang next to each other on either side of the divider. They've also been building some pretty impressive bubble nests. In each half of their tank is one apple snail and 3 ghosts shrimp. The snails are ignore, and the shrimp are occasionally eaten. All in all I'd say they are happy well adjusted bettas. That said, I'd probably never put them in a traditional community tank, I think it would be a little too stressful.

 

[BetaMom]

Each of my son's have a Betta (so that's 2), they both have their own tank. Couldn't tell ya if they are male or female.