10 gal tank, live plants and beta breeding

Question
Dear Darryl,

To start with, please forgive the length of this e-mail, but I want to give you the most info I can so that you can answer my questions.

I currently have a 10 gal aquarium that I set up 2 weeks ago.  I have 3 Rosara Hets and 3 Creamsicle Lyretail Mollies. I feed them regular tropical fish flakes. I introduced them about a week ago to the tank and today, I bought a bunch of moneywort.  I'm hoping that this will help to keep the composition of the water healthy for the fish.  I was also going to get some more mollies today at PetSmart, but the lady told me it would not be smart to do so given the relative newness of the tank.

I use well water in my tank, and it is quite free of contaminates and chemicals.  Still, I put some stresszyme in the tank a day before I introduced the fish just to be safe.  I also put some in-soluble salt in the tank for the mollies too.

Now, the questions I have for the tank and the plants are this; I would like to breed my mollies, how will the dynamic work with the rosaras in the tank?  Will they try to eat the baby mollies, or will the adult mollies protect them?  About the plants, should I just let them float on the top of the tank until they root themselves, or should I weight them and plant them myself?

Now, about the betas,  I have two males (which I know enough to keep in two separate containers), and I just bought two females from PetSmart today which I keep in the same container, separate from both males.  I would like to breed these too, and I was told that a male needs a choice between females or he will kill her if he doesn't like her. I will also be getting at least one more female before I attempt to breed them. The questions about this; Should I get a 5 gal tank for breeding purposes?  Should I get an underground filter for it?  How can I tell when it's time for the betas to mate?  Do I need to remove the females from the breeding tank after fertilization of the eggs?  I know I'm going to have to remove the males, but how much time do I give them with the females?

Again, sorry about the length of this e-mail, but I have a lot of questions.  At least I'm asking them before I make my attempts:)

Thank you for your time.

Tracy

Answer
Hey Tracy,

for the record, 10 gallons is about 1/4 the tank size you need for breeding live bearers.

That in mind, breeding fish is difficult, everything will eat the smaller fish. General rule of thumb #1: if a fish is small enough to fit in another fish's mouth, it's dinner. If it's slow enough, and small enough to be caught, cut in two, and eaten, it's dinner for two. Next, in a 10 gallon, i'd avoid breeding due to the water quality changes that will kill your fish as result of breeding. In 20, 30, or preferably 40 gallons, a few adults will go nuts over the space, but fry have room to hide without use of breeder traps, and adults wont cause ammonia spikes from eating fry and having high protein waste that turns into larger amounts of ammonia. While this seems unfair to have such a large tank taking up so much space, there comes a lot of good from it. With the 40 gallon tank, you can stock neon tetra and other small mouthed fish that cant eat fry, but still look beautiful! Also, your current 10 gallon tank becomes a lovely breeding tank for betta!

Which brings us to betta, first off: males wont kill females over "not liking her" fish are stupid, by default, but males always have one thing in common: eat. rest. breath. breed. Thats all they think about. If your male is in a small 1 gallon bowl, and you introduce a female not ready to breed, and he doesnt sense the hormones, he will kill her due to water quality control reasons. (2 large fish in 1 gallon leads to ammonia poisoning, and he knows it). If you watch your female, her anal fin will turn a bright red or pink banded color with vertical stripes, this means she's a few days off from breeding. When her anal fin turns all/mostly red/pink, she's ready. If your male has not started building bubble nests, he may not be ready to breed, and it's advisable to hold off until both parents are ready. Typically, males will build nests even in the most unideal conditions (at work in petco, i clean their bowls twice weekly to find about 1/3 build their nests, even when kids swirl them, shake them, take lids off and poke them, etc). Filtration is always recommended in tanks, breeding or not, so yes, i'd suggest you get any kind of filter you can. and 5 gallons is large enough, but if you're getting a bigger tank for the mollies, hold off on the 5 gallon for now.

As far as new tank syndrome goes, get amquel. amquel rids ammonia and nitrite problems that beneficial bacteria normally would, and since you dont have a high enough bacteria count, it'll cure your new tank blues! and shop petco for your live fish, we have better prices. But for medications, goto petsmart or walmart. typically speaking, it's cheaper. and i know that's bad business on my part, but im honest.

Hope all this helps! best wishes and good luck