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BN catfish in with Betta, so far, not so good.


branjie

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Hi all,

I put a BN catfish from my community tank in with my Betta about half an hour ago. It's about 5 or 6 cm from head to tail. I thought my Betta would be o.k with it, but he's not keen on someone invading his territory. He's stalking the BN and nipping at it occasionally. He's also doing this thing where he's jumping the tip of his head out of the water. At first I thought he was trying to catch tiny drops of water at the side of the tank, but maybe he's trying to get out!

Do BN catfish and Bettas normally get along? If so, maybe I should wait a while to see if things settle down??

Is a BN catfish going to be o.k in an unfiltered tank, with no areation?

I hope I haven't made a big mistake. I thought the BN would be good to clean up the light brown algae that has started to grow on the heater, but I can put the BN straight back into the community tank now if people think it's not going to work out.

Thanks for any help.

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Ew I didn't know snails ate fish.

Unfortunately there aren't a lot of hiding spots in my Betta's tank, but I added a rock for my BN to hide behind. He kept flapping about though, as he was stressing out, and this just made my Betta want to go on the attack. It's funny, when this Betta was originally in my community tank, he wasn't aggressive at all. I think he's decided that now he has his own territory, he's going to keep it that way. After seeing the change in him, I don't think I'd even risk putting a snail in now.

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An Oto would be a better idea - but they really appreciate plants to clean on, too... most brown algae is a natural part of a tank maturing, although with no filter and regular water changes to control ammonia and nitrites, I'm not sure how 'mature' a tank will get...

The other option, if you put a cave in for the bn, would be to remove the betta, change the layout of the tank, add the bn THEN the betta... often fish can be territorial when 'their' space is invaded, but not if they're invading someone elses... and the BN won't care about the betta one way or the other...

If you want snails, for cleaning duties, either go with one apple/mystery snail, or if you want more, I have a container here of 50 odd ramshorns you can have for free... (or if anyone has snail eating betta's and they want them as live food... lol)

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That's a lot of ramshorns Stuart. Maybe I'll grab a couple off you some time. I did actually think of doing what you said, making Ernie think it was a new tank, add the BN catfish, then add Ernie. Only thing is, I think the BN catfish was freaking out, and I think it had to do with the water conditions as much as anything. It wasn't until I put him in the tank that I thought, "oh no, the pH and everything is different in there". The tanks were the same temp, but the BN was going from a cycled tank, to an uncycled tank. The LFS guy pretty much scolded me for it when I told him :). Oops. Luckily the BN recovered very quickly once he was back in the community tank.

Ernie has been a real misery guts since this incident, and has stopped making bubble nests. I even returned the urn he liked to his tank, but that didn't cheer him up much. I have a feeling that there's no benefit to algae in an uncycled tank (but I really wouldn't know), so I'm going to do a total tank clean today and see if that gets him bubble nesting again.

When are you getting a new Betta Stuart?

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