# Setting up Sorority (sp)



## YoshesMom (Mar 15, 2011)

ok so heres what I have so far I know i need a few more plants but any other suggestions? everything you see in the picture has a little hidey hole in it or behind it its ten gallons heater and filter two pieces of drift wood the little plastic wood look a like cave ..thing (shush) and my giant plant


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## YoshesMom (Mar 15, 2011)

oh hi ya actually adding the picture MIGHT just help :roll:


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## BettaMama11 (Feb 20, 2011)

hmmm aside from the plants... maybe another hiding spot? I just set mine up yesterday and the girls would have done more damage had they not had enough hiding spots! I myself am looking into getting another tall plant was also thinking of finding something that floats on the surface of the water so when they go up to take air they're more hidden...


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## Crazykat (Nov 23, 2010)

Lots of plants, and make sure they're tall! You probably already knew that, but I thought I'd say it again just in case. Having plant cover in the top and middle of the tank is the only thing that kept my girls from chasing each other to death in the first week. Little cups or caves are also great. Some people don't like it, but a well cared for Hornwort is a really great plant for a sorority tank. It floats in the top and and middle and is nice and bushy. You just have to keep up with pinching off the older parts. Good luck!


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## Thunderloon (Feb 6, 2011)

tag... I'm it.


Small ornaments they can swim through also discourage following harassment.

I have a large ornamental oriental gate that both red and brownie like to hang around.

First I suggest a pre-filter sponge, they're sorta "cant go wrong" Fluval Edge ones will fit that filter's intake snugly, this will keep the girls from resting on the intake and possibly hurting themselves. They block material from getting into the fiberous filter cards and collect a great deal of solid non-decaying waste as well as keep leaves and girls from blocking the filter. In one case my experience has shown they're almost a must-have: Cambi a calico cambodian girl liked to sleep on my 150b's intake and one day I turned around to look in the tank and found her folded over around the intake strainer. She hadn't suffocated yet but her swim bladder was permanently collapsed and she spent the next seven months powering to the surface then gliding back down. Betta rely MOSTLY on their swim bladders for depth control. She was pretty, a spade tail and very strong. Miss her a great deal and if I ever find one like her such as Cammy or Clowntail I'll buy them even if I have to put them in their own tank. I couldn't breed her because of the damage, she'd have been very worth the try.

Java fern plants, http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/prod_display.cfm?c=747+892+800&pcatid=800 located in the rear corners is great, they don't need much light and they're very easy to care for AND generate new plants from their leaf tips. Cheap too.

While betta don't "need" water aeration I suggest getting a air pump and stone then routing the stone down in the back of the filter, even a little hawkeye will be enough. This is to support the biological filtration's needs.

Your bottom rock is a little thick/deep for unplanted, simple to solve with http://diszhal.info/english/plants/en_Cryptocoryne_wendtii.php these like to spread large roots out and they're fairly resilient to simple gravel bottoms. Or you can get a couple water onion plants: http://animal-world.com/encyclo/fresh/plants/RosettePlants/WaterOnion.php this I've discovered produces a network of roots about seven inches in diameter and can solve the large open space problems while adding fair to good plant benefits to a tank. I've had one for a year and it has yet to give me any secondary plants. Mine gets lots of nutrition and sits dead center in the tank, their leaves are fairly stiff and will reach the whole length of the tank if you let them but you can thumb-nail pinch them off without the plant killing the whole leaf, letting you "groom" them to desired size. Since they will grow from the bottom glass to the surface of the water they're considered superior plants for biology support.

Anubias plants are nice as well but can be fairly fiddly and the girls often like to nose under plants for sleep, pulling them up out of the rock as they do.

Another thread here had a child's toy polyhedral mesh ball as an ornament in a tank and I'm sure the girls will love it as well.

Keep in mind that the filter you have may not be enough bio-filtration, you can supplement bio-filtration using sponge filters from http://www.jehmco.com/html/hydro-sponge_filters.html these are carried by bigalsonline and several other stores, as additional bio support they're great and a good place to run aeration from as well.

If you put a pre-filter sponge on the filter's intake and run one of the hydro sponge as well you should have no problems biologically, once established such additions will likely be able to support the tank themselves. If you ever have long power outages the sponge filters can keep the tank alive using a squeeze bulb like comes with blood pressure test kits.

Keep in mind to place five girls in at one time and spend a large amount of time playing with them the first couple days. Sororities are best if you avoid duplicating colors (most girls will have a main, ray and sheen color, if all three match between an old one and a new one you're begging for brutality) and if you keep the tank well and it stays clean of infection it can be fun to put males in inside a 9-way breeder basket, a common thing in my house because it gets the girls going too. This is also a good tactic for healing a boy's growing fins.

IF you get a girl who likes to attack from below, take her out permanently.
IF you get a girl who likes to ram, take her out permanently.
If you get a girl who is over-aggressive, try letting her loose in a boy's tank for a minute or use training techniques such as a feeding time paddle (wooden spoon) to block her and protect younger girls.

I keep about eleven girls in my tank, names are a pain sometimes and on occasion all I can get as a replacement is blue ones. 
If you have seven or fewer, which is advised in a 10, you will likely need to immediately purchase a new girl when one dies or the pecking order can be shaken up. When my alpha female dies I spend a whole day's free time asserting the new alpha female, I choose on personality, tenacity and experience in the tank but their aggressiveness isn't too important. Once they know YOU put them in charge everything will follow. You'll likely have to give them support (wooden spoon, net-time-outs at the surface) but the girls generally have a wonderful disposition towards each other once they become a school.

Crown tail girls are a hazard I hope you avoid, I'm thinking about setting up a crown-tail sorority but the kind of open feeding you can allow in a normal veil tail sorority will often result in crown tail girls becoming bloated and dying of distension and ruptures. 

Feel free to pm any of the sorority keepers for advice on behavior control issues.


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## blacksheep72 (Mar 17, 2011)

Thunderloon said:


> Crown tail girls are a hazard I hope you avoid, I'm thinking about setting up a crown-tail sorority but the kind of open feeding you can allow in a normal veil tail sorority will often result in crown tail girls becoming bloated and dying of distension and ruptures.


Can you elaborate on this? Aside from the slightly different finnage, what would make the crown tail females different? I'd like to set up a sorority tank eventually and was planning on having different fin-types included. I never thought there would be issues like you mentioned above. Thanks.


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## BettaMama11 (Feb 20, 2011)

This may sound like a silly question but how do you know which girl is the Alpha??


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## Thunderloon (Feb 6, 2011)

The alpha is whichever girl you WANT in charge, but in your first five girls in the tank it is usually the one who enforces "my way or hide in a crevice" on the others.

Crowntails have an issue much like pica, they eat and eat and eat but do not feel their guts getting too full, they can - without prompting - eat until they explode. They go about it acting like they're hungry all the time. Most betta will eat and eat like pigs but the crowntails go about it with a righteous fury and will not only aggressively take all the food on the surface they can get to but then spend the rest of the day pecking the little bits out of the rocks. They'll try to eat anything. If you've ever had a boy crowntail who constantly begs for food you'll see the picture.

My tank has 7 veiltail and one high-bred halfmoon female, I can toss a scattering of micro-wafer and guppy pellet across the water and everybody will have some to eat. After a while I'll turn the light off at night and push an algae wafer in for the CAEater, a crowntail would immediately chase after the wafer and fight with the CAEater then consume the wafer until she couldn't swim whereas the veil tail girls ignore the wafer entirely when I slip it in.

Even my best behaved crowntail ended up dying from organ failure, I once tried making up for lost girls in the pecking order with crowntails because I couldn't get veiltail. Next time I'll get more female guppies instead. 

They are very pretty but every one I've had in the sorority has gone the way of Mr Creosote in the end.

They DO however make great split-tankmates with single males in 5 gallon tanks... give 3.5 to the boy and 2 to the girl.


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## CrowntailxKing (Mar 18, 2011)

Since females have such smaller fins, how do you tell their types apart? Idk if I have VT females or CT females


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## blacksheep72 (Mar 17, 2011)

Thanks for the explanation, Thunderloon. Very interesting and helpful.


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## scootshoot (Oct 11, 2010)

I have 6 thriving females in my 14 that's been running over 2+ months and I still don't who the alpha is. I added the 6th just over a week ago who is the smallest of the lot, probably 60pct of the size of the females in my tank. They all get along just cozy and school together more than avoiding one another.

Have also modified the tank lots in terms of moving plants and deco around. Have heard this may "restart" the pecking order but have not noticed any difference in terms of aggression or what not.


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## KayDowson (Mar 24, 2011)

how do i make my female the alpha im not sure if im understanding this correctly.


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## Thunderloon (Feb 6, 2011)

the females apart is a good question

VT will have almost straight back fin rays
CT will have crowns on their fins, most CT are CVT actually.

What you can look at is the shape of the spread of the female tail and the upper fin. Generally CT and VT will have an almost circle of tail form and the upper fin grows up and curves back.

HM will have a much larger spread vertically on the tail and the upper fin will grow up first and keep growing up then turn back. I have a couple VT with this trait but it isn't as pronounced as in HM females. 

One of the more common characteristics of the HM is dual and tri-tone fin edges without the edge colors appearing elsewhere on their bodies.

This girl shows the HM topfin but not the multi-tone http://s63.photobucket.com/albums/h121/rhaxma_keiji/?action=view&current=powder.jpg
This girls on this page match the spawns of the boys, you see the gold one has two-tone: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ray-brown/current%20spawns.htm
(wow would I love to have the pair of copper imbellis (peaceful))

AHA found it: http://bettysplendens.com/articles/page.imp?articleid=1063
Females... enjoy.

You can see in there how the VT top fin slopes back and the rest shoot out then back.


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## blacksheep72 (Mar 17, 2011)

Thunderloon said:


> AHA found it: http://bettysplendens.com/articles/page.imp?articleid=1063
> Females... enjoy.


 
Good read. Interesting fact about veil tail being a dominant trait in breeding.


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## scootshoot (Oct 11, 2010)

KayDowson said:


> how do i make my female the alpha im not sure if im understanding this correctly.


You can't "make" anything. It's a natural behavior, process of letting nature ride its course. Concept is if multiple female betta's are placed in a tank. Usual reaction is they become frisky amongst themselves as they fight over a pecking order. Eventually one dominant or "Alpha" female arises from this group and the overall quarrelsome behavior will drastically lower soon after.


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## KayDowson (Mar 24, 2011)

how long do they normally "fight" for... how long should i let it go on before i seperate them?


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## CrowntailxKing (Mar 18, 2011)

I interfered only when they were locking their jaws together. Also intervene if one is starting to get badly beaten and won't give up. All I did was stick my finger between them so one could swim away.


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## scootshoot (Oct 11, 2010)

Mine took about a week to calm down. But it was nothing like other posters here whose female betta's were actually locking jaws. None of mine went that far. In fact the only major issue I had in my community sorority setup was a little Red Tail Shark. This guy was so annoying. He took up the whole bottom half of the tank (which I could live with), but unlike the female betta's who would chase one another for brief second spurts and let their targets be, this red tail insisted on chasing my poor female platy for hours on end non stop. She was so exhausted and stressed from this ordeal she would literally hide in a cave for hours until the Red Tail noticed her again and start his nonstop chasing all over. 

Luckily Petsmart has a 10 day return policy, I sent his arse back to the store the next day.


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## CrowntailxKing (Mar 18, 2011)

Yeah, my tank only has female Betta fish. When they locked jaws together it looked like they were kissing each other and slowly started to sink. It was weird.


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## iheartmybettas (Jan 31, 2011)

I haven't ever experience the lock jaw thing but it usually takes about a week. My primary thing as far as setting it up is LOTS of plants and LOTS of places to hide. 

This thread is a few days old so if you already have your up and running I hope it is going smoothly. Sororities can be a little stressful.

If it helps here is a pic of mine. I recently upgraded it from a 10gal to a 29 long so I also added a bunch of females make 11 now. I haven't had much problem with them getting along.


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## CrowntailxKing (Mar 18, 2011)

Yeah, I don't know how to explain the jaw locking thing other than it was as if they were just biting each others mouths and holding on and it looked as if they were kissing xD


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## Panthera (Nov 2, 2010)

When I re-introduced my girls a few of them locked jaws. In my opinion its not too dangerous as long as they stop after a bit, they're testing each others strength. Cichlids do the same exact thing, its just part of them trying to figure out which will be the Alpha. Now everything is peaceful  

Well until I add 3 more females tomorrow that is......


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## CrowntailxKing (Mar 18, 2011)

Panthera said:


> When I re-introduced my girls a few of them locked jaws. In my opinion its not too dangerous as long as they stop after a bit, they're testing each others strength. Cichlids do the same exact thing, its just part of them trying to figure out which will be the Alpha. Now everything is peaceful
> 
> Well until I add 3 more females tomorrow that is......


I figured that's what it was...but after a minute or two, I felt like I had to separate them  Glad Im not crazy / the only one that has seen that


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## peachesxo (Jan 20, 2011)

iheartmybettas said:


> I haven't ever experience the lock jaw thing but it usually takes about a week. My primary thing as far as setting it up is LOTS of plants and LOTS of places to hide.
> 
> This thread is a few days old so if you already have your up and running I hope it is going smoothly. Sororities can be a little stressful.
> 
> If it helps here is a pic of mine. I recently upgraded it from a 10gal to a 29 long so I also added a bunch of females make 11 now. I haven't had much problem with them getting along.


hellooooo
that tank is awessomeee


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