Male & Female Betta + Crawfish = disaster. Please advise...

edaskalos

edaskalos

Large Fish
#1
Aug 4, 2004
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Anchorage, AK
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#1
Okay, so I have had both SW and FW fish for quite sometime and am very savvy on many issues including compatibility. We got our 10 year old son a nice little 6 gallon tank to start into the hobby himself and I fell preyto his own wide-eyes when perusing the LFS. For his selection, he decided to get a 2 inch crawfish in lieu of the ghost shrimp we initially decided for his clean-up crew because it was really cool looking (dad agreed). He kows it is a small tank and that the craw fish will nip fins and eat smaller fish, so what did we bring home last night...a male and female betta :eek: I rationed it out that the bettas are themselves aggressive, I have plenty of hiding places and plants, and I will keep the crawfish well fed so he doesn't look swimming meals. (Mr. Logical, right) So we put the 2 bettas in and they saw each other right away and the female immidiately acted very passive and "bowed" to the male and was actually interested in him. Other than the male getting ruffled at the sight of her initially, they had no adverse reactions to each other and ate decently last night. The crawfish ignored both of them and ate his meaty dinner I gave him.

Fast worward to this morning...The male has lost 60 percent of his tail fins and the female has a small nip out of her bottom caudal fin area. Both otherwise alive and healthy and swimming around just fine with each other. This all being the case, I assume that the crawfish did the damage and the male tried to fight him (not her). Bettas aren't nocturnal like crawfish, the crawfish has also eaten a guppy in the past, and Bettas seemed to be fine with each other. If the Bettas were going to fight, wouldn't it be during the day?

I removed the crawfish and took pics of the Bettas to compare their fin damage to see if they fight going forward..

What do you think?
 

beckyd

beckyd

Large Fish
#2
Mar 16, 2009
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What do I think, as in, could you have put any worse of a combo together?? My answer is- Sure! You could put a shark in your kids pool! Sorry, but you made a really, really bad decision:( really, really,really...

The crawfish is such a bad decision for any fish you don't intend it to eat that I advise taking him back. Your only other choice is his own tank. You cannot keep bettas with it. Period. Do you realize how big a crawfish gets? That is not a well fed shrimp!

As far as the pair goes, you have already asked for the likely illness, if not death, for both your bettas. If you choose to keep them together, one or both of them are dead. Betta males chase away females that either or not receptive to breeding or have bred. He sees them as a terrible threat to his eggs. He sees a non-gravid female as a territorial threat to his future eggs. He cannot attract another female with one around already. You put them in a mere 6 gallons. She has nowhere to go. Even though she submitted to him, he wants her to mate, which she is unlikely to be able to accomplish without proper preparation, or leave. He will chase her or kill her. She will fight back to protect herself. Whoever is tougher will win, the other will die. Or they will both die from infection or trauma. Bettas are very good fighters. They spent all night trying to rip each others gills apart.
 

Newman

Newman

Elite Fish
#3
Sep 22, 2009
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#3
beckyd said:
What do I think, as in, could you have put any worse of a combo together?? My answer is- Sure! You could put a shark in your kids pool! Sorry, but you made a really, really bad decision:( really, really,really...

The crawfish is such a bad decision for any fish you don't intend it to eat that I advise taking him back. Your only other choice is his own tank. You cannot keep bettas with it. Period. Do you realize how big a crawfish gets? That is not a well fed shrimp!

As far as the pair goes, you have already asked for the likely illness, if not death, for both your bettas. If you choose to keep them together, one or both of them are dead. Betta males chase away females that either or not receptive to breeding or have bred. He sees them as a terrible threat to his eggs. He sees a non-gravid female as a territorial threat to his future eggs. He cannot attract another female with one around already. You put them in a mere 6 gallons. She has nowhere to go. Even though she submitted to him, he wants her to mate, which she is unlikely to be able to accomplish without proper preparation, or leave. He will chase her or kill her. She will fight back to protect herself. Whoever is tougher will win, the other will die. Or they will both die from infection or trauma. Bettas are very good fighters. They spent all night trying to rip each others gills apart.
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Ditto .
 

L

littletankbigworld

Superstar Fish
#4
Aug 16, 2009
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SW Pennsylvania
#4
Double ditto. That's terrible! Those fish should not be kept together in the first place, let alone in that small of a tank. This just proves how uneducated store employees are. It's not difficult for me to believe that no one commented at the store what a horrible atrocity was about to occur. What do I think? Put them all in separate tanks!
 

L

littletankbigworld

Superstar Fish
#6
Aug 16, 2009
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SW Pennsylvania
#6
Put the bettas in separate tanks! They do not make good "couples" and only an experienced fishkeeper should place a male and a female in the same tank, and usually only when the person is trying to breed them. Monitoring the betta couple is not going to make things better. They will fight to the death, even if things start to seem "peachy." Separate them...now!
 

big54bob

big54bob

Superstar Fish
#7
Dec 20, 2006
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#7
Rule #1 Don't keep crayfish with any fish you want

Rule #2 Keeping male and female bettas together is a big nono.

I think it wasn't the cray that did the fin damage but the pair fighting. Fin loss is common amoung breeding pairs. If the cray got ahold of the male and/or female he would make sushi out of it.
 

beckyd

beckyd

Large Fish
#10
Mar 16, 2009
381
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#10
Reread my post. This is not a dog pack. There is not a dominant and a submissive. You are treating them like a different species. That social behavior does not apply to these fish. You cannot teach your cat to fly by monitoring it as you toss it off the roof. There will be one male protecting his mating territory. One male of this species in a territory, with brief exceptions of a female only for mating. One. Period.
 

jingles

jingles

Medium Fish
#13
Jan 28, 2009
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Auburn, AL
#13
yes, the damage I agree is done by the bettas, if the cray grabbed the Betta it would cut them in half...
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Yea I agree with newman. I was gonna say the same thing.
Also I really wouldn't consider crayfish on the clean-up crew list. In my experience Crayfish are like kids, if you want a kid to eat spinach but you have oreo's on the table he's gonna want the oreos. Just like the crayfish wants the fish and not that old nasty food on the bottom. This is just from my experience though..
 

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