Has any one had a Marine Betta?

[RedDragon]

HAs any one ever had a Marine Betta and If you have how did you take care of it?

[Chris]

See em for sale all the time but i've rarely seen or heard of anyone who owns one. From my understanding... their feeding habits are similar to that of Lionfish(they like to stalk their prey) but they're slower so they should be kept in a tank without similar types of predators.

I believe they'll also eat just about anything they can fit in their mouth so that leaves out keeping small fish with them as well.

Don't have much more info on them... maybe someone else can chime in. :grin:

[MikeP]

Ed (Hammer) used to have one you might ask him. Also Minh Nguyen who sometimes posts here has kept one for a while if I remember correctly. They do have some issues with adapting to non live food initially and any small shrimp / fish are likely to become a meal. Do a google search on marine betta or Calloplesiops species. Might check out the FAQ's on wetwebmedia for a quick rundown.

http://www.wetwebmedia.com/roundhdfaqs.htm

HTH

[OrionN]

I got a breeding pair in my 450 g tank.
MB are very hardy. You will almost never see a sick MB, just thin ones. There are many report that MB is the only fish survide a tank wipe out. It maybe dificult to get them to start eating as they initially only eat live food. Have the LFS feedthem and see if they eat frozen food for you.
If you have a large tank with lots of live rock, your MB will be fine. I had my older MB for 5 years befor i see him eat Mysis shrimps They other MB, I have had for about 2 years.
Don't expect to see your MB very much for the first years or two. After that, they are often out. My MB eat frozen food very well these day. They can gorge themself with frozen Mysis like the rest of the fish in my tank.
All in all, they are excelent reef fish (they may like fancy. expensive shrimp dinner, especially righ after the shrimp molts) BTW, I have not loose any shrimps in my tank due to the BM yet. May be due to the shrimps were in there first, and it is a very large tank.
Let me know if you have any specific question.
Also, there were two articles about MB in Advaced Aquarist. and one article in Reefkeepers last year. Here are the links
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/sept2002/Fish.htm
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-04/hcs3/index.htm

Minh Nguyen