Mixing Beta Fish With Other Fish......a fish story.....

I bought another beta fish the other day.  A moontail beta.  I named him "M."  He almost looks like this one here.   However, among my fish in the tank I have one fantail goldfish and several comets and some glass catfish.

At any rate, the conventional wisdom is that you don't mix betas with regular fish.  Why?  Betas pick on everything in the tank that's not themselves. 

So I mixed my beta, "M," in with the other fish.  First few minutes, M wasn't really getting along with everybody.  The other fish were WAYYYYYY to friendly and were invading M's personal space trying to meet him.  M kinda went ballistic for a while, flipping out and fanning himself out as shown here until they kind of all went "Whoah....who's the new guy.....lighten up dude...." and gave him some space.


The next day, the rest of my fish didn't seem as chipper anymore.  Normally they are as happy as dogs when the master gets home, wagging their tails and begging for food.  Now that M was in the house, they kind of hung out at the bottom not really excited about anything - almost as if they'd had the party sucked out of them and they had to revert to their primeval instincts of watching not to get their tails kicked.   They hung about on the bottom near the plants, watching in case food came near them but not actively looking for it anymore.

Meanwhile, M found a few plants and wedged himself in a corner and just hung out by himself and went on a few patrols around his bush and marked his territory.  I did catch him picking on the snail, who's name is "Speedy," at one point but the snail said "Forget this" and pulled her antennae in and dropped off the glass to the bottom and tried to look like a rock where M wouldn't find her.


The next day, one very small comet was dead.  It was like a runt anyways though.  While the other comets got bigger, this one actually shrank over time it seemed.  It was like a head with fins and a spine.  So I wasn't surprised to see its tail chewed a bit and M had done it in apparently.  I wasn't sure if this was a good idea now.  I've had a beta before and eventually they all got along but that was a female.  This was a male.  The big fantail goldfish is way bigger than M but M can do a great job fanning himself out in a vibrant display of color and size.


Today, everyone seemed back to normal.  Maybe the other fish were sad the comet was dead.  M was even near the others by about 2 inches and they ate together.  If the other comets got too close M would fan out a little bit but not too much and everyone seemed to get along.   You really can mix betas and other fish!  I think you just have to have a bit bigger fish to show the beta who's boss and give everyone some plants to hide behind and give them some time (to kill off the weaker more wimpier ones).   Isn't that called Darwinism?