Male & Female Betta's in same tank

[crackatinny]

I can't seem to find a straight answer to this.

My wife wants to get a Betta, (na not a betta bloke, at least not at this stage LOL) a betta fish, we will be using a 5gal tank, can we put a female and a male in the same tank?.

Also what about small balloon mollies or platties, with a male betta?

[Abbeys_Mom]

Platies and mollies are find with bettas (most of the time). I would not keep a male and female betta together in a tank that small. You can keep male and female bettas together, but you need a 1-3 ratio of one male to 3 three females and a large tank (IMO 20-30g's min) so they have space enough to get away from each other.

[minabird]

I've read on several different websites and forums, both general and betta specific/breeders, not to mix a male and female bettas unless you plan on breeding them. Most of them cited due to the aggressiveness of the species, both males and females, towards each other; the females can be as aggressive and territorial as the males. I mentioned in a couple other posts about my bad experience trying to have 3 female bettas in a 10 gal....alot of torn fins. One poster on another forum wrote about how he did the same thing you want to do, 3 females and a male, and when he woke up the next morning, his male was cowering in a corner, missing most of his fins, with the 3 females stalking him.

If you do, make sure you keep a close eye on them for the next several days. My 3 females appeared fine for the first couple of days, gill flaring, circling, chasing, but no real fin nipping. The real fighting didn't happen until the 4th day and continued for another 2.

Good luck. Hope you have better luck than I did.

[crackatinny]

Thanks for the tip's, it was only going to be 1 of each, I knew 2 males would not work, but most of what I had read elsewhere about the 1 male 1 female combo was fairly contradictary, so I thought I'd ask the best.

For now the main ones I want to put in are 2 small mollies (both under an inch, they are getting a flogging off my other mollies), so i think i'll give them a go with the male betta, and keep an eye on them.

[Betta_noob]

I would really advise against it.
Even breeders occasionally lose their pride stock to breeding agression, they are dangerous fish towards each other.

[Rue]

I recently added 1 male and 3 female bettas to my community tank...

...I also put in a hornwort and let it float...the females mostly hang around the hornwort, but do spend a lot of time cruising the bottom of the tank...

...so far so good...no signs of aggression...