Keeping Female Betta

This may seem obvious to most, but for those who are new to betta, the easies way to tell if you have a female or a male is by the length of the fins. If your betta has short fins and tail, you most likely have a female. If on the other hand, your betta has a long flowing tail and long fins, you have a male.

You will occasionally find a male with short fins and tail, and a female with longer than the norm fins and tail, but on the whole, the guideline is generally good.

It may seem obvious to skip over any fish that have growths, or are in poor health, but what about the less obvious signs of a sick fish? If there is a lot of uneaten food in the cup, you should steer clear. It could be a sign of something not visible yet, but still a sickness. Lethargic fish and ones who can't seem to either get to the top of the cup, or get to the bottom are also signs of sickness.

The best ones to choose are ones who take an active interest in what's going on around them. When you pick up the cup does the betta flare at you? Does it swim around, jump, or bite at the water? These are all signs of a fish in good health.

The smallest size tank for a female colony that I and others have had success with, is a 10 gallon. You can try it in a 5, but the smaller the space, the more hiding places and water changes will be needed.


When you go to add your fish, try to put them all in at once. This way, none of them will decide the tank belongs to them and the others are invading their territory. If you already have 1 female betta, and wish to change their tank into a female only tank, you can try removing the current inhabitant, and rearranging the plants and decore. Then place all the betta into the tank at once. This may trick the origional betta into thinking it is an entirely new tank.

Regardless of how many you are putting into the tank, you can expect a few fights in the first couple of days. Some females may be aggressive enough to actually take bites out of the tails and fins of the others, or they may just chase them around the tank and poke them with their noses. In either case, this is normal. Do not interfere unless you are truly concerned that a particular betta will be bullied to death, or has been beaten up excessively. They have to establish the pecking order and once they have done so, they will be able to share the tank with very little problems.

Ideally, you should have a planted tank. Betta love hiding in them, resting on them, and playing tag through them. If you don't know anything about planted aquariums, or don't wish to bother with live plants, you can use fake ones. But be careful to test all the fake plants before adding them to your tank.

Some plastic plants and other tank decorations have sharp or rough edges that will tear your betta's delicate fins. If you aren't sure if the item you wish to add is safe, take a nylon stocking and gently rub it across the surface of the item. If it snags anywhere, so will the fins of your betta.


Silk plants are usually the best to use as long as the metal wires inside are completely covered and no sharp edges are found. You will also want to have caves or other hidey-holes. These can be regular ornaments from a fish store, slate pieces leaned against the sides of the tank, or even PVC pipe cut and filed to the right size.

People always say that betta live in rice paddies and therefore are fine in tiny fish bowls. This is not true. Those rice paddies are a few feet deep and as large as football fields. If you are going to keep a female tank, you will want both a heater and a filter. But you have to be somewhat careful about the filter. Betta are not used to large currents. If you notice all your betta tend to stay in the farthest away corner of the tank, or have trouble swimming on the side with the filter, the current is too strong.

There are a number of ways to fix this. You can cover part of the intake tube so it pulls in less water. You can make a sort of splash guard that fits over your filter output so the water hits the guard first and falls into the tank at a slower rate. You can use a filter for a tank smaller than the one you have (though this is not recommended as it will not clean your tank as well as one for the right size will) or you can skip the filter and make more frequent water changes.

Give your fish a week or two to get used to the current in their tank, if after that time they are still hiding from the current you know you need to fix something. All of my girls at one time or another have played games in the current in my tank. They like to swim right up to nearly the surface and then ride the current to the bottom like it's a waterslide. But it took them about a week to get used to it.

You also need a heater as betta are tropical fish. They prefer a temperature of an average of 76F but will tolerate anywhere from 70-80F. Any colder and they will become sluggish and not swim around very much, any warmer and you will be able to see visible signs of discomfort.

It is possible to keep other fish in the tank with your female bettas. Just like when adding the betta to the tank, you have to watch for aggression however. Some people have luck with one kind of fish, and others have nothing but trouble with the exact same species. I have had luck with Mollies, Otocinclus, and Corydoras. Some people have been able to keep platies and swordtails as well, but as I've said before, it's all up to the fish.

Females can have coloring every bit as bright and showy as a male, they just have shorter fins. Some species of betta are more aggressive than others. Crowntails in particular are known to be aggressive, and if you have a Cambodian Red crowntail like my Vixen here:




You can almost be guarenteed an aggressive fish. Cambodian Red is a color, if you didn't know. It's when a fish has either flesh-tone or white/clear body and red fins. You can also get Cambodian Yellow and Cambodian Green, not sure if there are others.

The pictures aren't the sharpest, and I do appologise for that. Crowntails are named for the spikey look of their fins and tails. They resemble the spikes on crowns. You can also get doubletail, veiltail, and roundtail (the most common to find in stores). Doubletail is exactly what it sounds like, instead of having the normal tail, it appears to have 2 slightly overlapping. Veiltail is the standard one you find for male betta in pet shops, but can also be on females, they just won't be as long.

As for aggression based on colors, it has been my experience that after the Cambodian Reds, regular Red betta are the next most aggressive, while the dark blues and bluegreen are generally pretty docile. This may not be the case for you as all betta are different, but it has been my experience so far.

Speaking of colors, it is not unusual to buy a betta, bring it home, and have it change color on you. Usually you will end up with a more vibrant or just darker color than you initially had. Say you picked up a betta that was mostly white in the store, once you get it home and in its new tank, the white betta is now red. Or pink, or blue. The reason? When betta are stressed they tend to get paler and will usually show stress lines (horizontal bars of another shade running along the body, not to be confused with the vertical bars that show when they're ready to mate.) If they are very stressed or generally unhappy they may bleach themselves out enough that their color actually changes. Thus when you get them home, and put them into a better environment than those little display cups, the fish has less stress and gets happy again. And so the color they were hiding comes out. I've heard of white fish becoming red, red fish suddenly aquiring blue tones as well as the red, and one of my own girls (Marina, pictured at the end of this lens) was actually a very dark blue/purple in the store and turned green when I got her home.

So if you fish changes to a more vibrant color, you don't need to worry. They aren't sick. They are just becoming the color or colors they always were. Now, if your fish suddenly gets paler or loses some of its color, that could be a sign of sickness and you should keep a careful watch to be sure the behavior hasn't changed as well.

Most betta will be used to some form of pellet if they're from a pet store. I prefer HBH Betta Bites as they float forever unless the betta mangle it. You can also feed them freeze-dried food like bloodworms and brineshrimp. Live food is good, but you have to be wary of parasites, and also watch to be sure it is all eaten and none gets away to bury itself in your substrate.

Some betta are especially picky and refuse to eat for a day or 3 after you bring them home. It won't hurt them if it's only a few days, in fact it's a good idea to fast your betta 1 day a week. Also, there is a lot of conflicting information on how much and how often to feed. You cannot go by the usual "as much as they can eat in a few minutes" as most betta can and will eat themselves to death. The general guideline is that a betta's stomach is the size of its eye. So if you are feeding pellets, 2-3 per feeding is a good amount. And depending on the size of your betta, if you feed it that much twice a day, it should be fine. You can even switch up foods, feed pellets in the morning and freezdried or live in the evening and vice versa. Just be careful your betta doesn't decide to hold out for it's favorite food and ignore everything else!

Some people swear by adding aquarium salt to their betta tanks with every water change. It won't harm your betta if you do so, but I have found that for some diseases adding salt helps to get rid of it. But it works best if you don't add the salt regularly to the tank. Just adding the salt when your betta is sick and doing a water change after it is healthy again, leaving out the salt, seems to work the best. But it is totally up to you.

Betta are very smart fish. They will recognize the person who takes care of them the most in the house. Mine do little dances when I come near the tank as they think it's feeding time. All the time! Silver will even bite at the water and glass if I don't feed her immediately. And occasionally she will jump out of the tank to get to the food.

They also swim right up to the front of the tank when they see it's me. If a friend or other housemate looks into the tank, the girls will swim over to see who it is, then leave again to do other things. Most people who own betta will tell you of the little cute things or quirks their betta have, and all of them recognize who takes care of them. They are very social fish and some will even get depressed if ignored. I've heard stories about people who have to put their tanks in a prominent place in the house so the betta can see them otherwise they get depressed and pick up bad habits like tailbiting.

Besides eBay, you can get many different varieties and colors from LiveAquaria.com

They also have many, many varieties of saltwater fish, coral, and invertebrates.

All the images on this lens were taken by me, and are of my own personal bettas. My current tank is a 10 gallon planted aquarium with 4 betta and 2 oto catfish. Please do not repost the images without permission.



A small portion of my current tank, and 3 of my 4 girls (Vixen having been shown off earlier in the lens):




Silver, a silvery blue crowntail who has dark blue spots on her fins:


Gypsy, so named for the black and gold speckles all over her body. She's a normal roundtail but currently the top fish in my tank:


And finally, Marina. A green crowntail with a black head: