Hi,


I wrote a couple of weeks about trying a female betta with 2 ADF in a 5 gallon hex. You wanted me to let you know how it went. So, here goes . . .


I tried a female betta this weekend. I had to take her out after about 24 hours b/c she and my bigger (relatively speaking) ADF were stalking each other. It looked kind of nasty.


I was going to take her back to the pet store, but felt guilty about it and ended up buying her her own little tank with pretty lavender glass stones and a plant. I'm broke, but still spent $$ on the betta girl. Guess I'm hooked, huh?!

Back to the drawing board with tank mates for the ADF.

Some people have suggested a dwarf gourami. Although they are reported to be peaceful, I have read several stories on the net about rogue gourami that kill. Since they are in the same family as bettas, I feel very nervous about a gourami. They are beautiful though.

I thought about a couple of small cory cats. They sure are cute, but I worry that they and the frogs might get in each other's way.

I also thought about otto cats, but have read that they are prone to die in the first month. I'm new and don't want to shorten an animal's life by my inexperience combined with their less than hardy nature.

I think ghost shrimp are cool, but also read that they can sometimes attack frogs and even tear off limbs.

Snails scare me in that I've read that one snail can quickly lead to an infestation.


I just want a peaceful, calm, SAFE tank for my froggies with a spot of color/interest provided by a totally safe fish (or other acquatic creature).

Any help you can give would be much appreciated.

Trina

Sorry the betta and ADF's didn't work out. Dwarf gouramis are better in a tank larger than 5 gallons. In many ways, they behave similarly to female bettas so they may do what she did. I have two panda cories with my 3 ADF's but in a 20 gallon tank. They ignore each other but sometimes the ADF's suck up the cories' fins by mistake when they're all trying to eat live blackworms. The frogs don't actually harm the fins though. Ottos are hard to keep alive. I put in many in my 50 gallon tank and only one survived and is still alive years later. I've had smaller shrimp (cherry, red-fronted shrimp) with my ADF's but not the larger ghost shrimp which I've heard can go after ADF's. Snails aren't scary. Some species do reproduce quite a lot. The ones that don't are too big for a 5 gallon tank. In a 5 gallon tank, you could add a small school of nice fish such as up to half a dozen white cloud mountain minnows, zebra danios (may pester each other but should ignore the frogs), neon tetras, other small tetras, small pencilfish, etc. I have glowlight danios (not glowlight tetras which would also be fine or glofish which are mutated zebra fish that glow) with mine but they're not at all pet stores.