Anyone have a divided tank with bettas?

[Goldie Blue]

I am in the midst of a cycle crash in my 20 gallon long tank my axolotl has been in. It's time for her to get an upgrade anyway, so I picked up a 40g for her today. I am wanting to combine both my bettas into her old 20 gallon, and ordered a solid blackout divider today. The kit comes with two sponge filters, and I am wondering if anyone else here runs a setup like this? 

I am generally not the biggest fan of sponge filters, but they seem to be a fan fav of betta keepers. Goldie Blue has been through a LOT, as some of you know, he lost his whole tail due to fin rot and stress, so I want to make sure this is absolutely the right move for him. He has been doing great in his current tank, and while I am fearful of adding stress to him, condensing the amount of tanks I have would be wonderful lol. I'd be going from 4 tanks down to 3 with this move.

I guess my main question is what kind of filtration do you run with divided tanks, and what tips might you have for me?

[Fonske]

On 2/4/2023 at 1:16 PM, Goldie Blue said:

I guess my main question is what kind of filtration do you run with divided tanks, and what tips might you have for me?

I kept two male bettas in a divided ~10 gallon for about a year or so. Used two tiny internal filters, one filter for each side. Two tiny heaters as well, one for each side; two lids. The setup worked fine for everything except I hated the way divided tank looked.

For the filtration,  as long as the flow is very gentle and the intake is betta-safe, I think any filter would be fine. 

My advice would be to make absolutely sure that the bettas can't go into each other's part of the tank, by swimming, jumping, or any other way. My divider was just a large piece of sponge and once during a water change I moved it a bit and one of the males went to visit his tankmate. He got his dorsal and caudal fins ripped all the way to the body, caused some damage to the other male too, but luckily both quickly and completely recovered. 

[Goldie Blue]

On 2/4/2023 at 8:03 AM, Fonske said:

My advice would be to make absolutely sure that the bettas can't go into each other's part of the tank, by swimming, jumping, or any other way

This kit looks like it fits super tight, and comes with clips. This is the link https://www.lifewithpetsgci.com/store/p27//store/p27/20_Gallon_LONG_Divider_Premium_Package.html.html#/

I might actually silicone them in place. I want 0 chance of them seeing each other, or having an incident like you described. How scary! I am glad they recovered. 

I don't necessarily want to do this for fun, I just really want to downsize how many tanks I have. Plus I already have this tank in place with it's own cabinet and really don't feel like breaking all that down lol. 

I'll give the sponge filters a go and see how I like it. I have a small nano canister I use for my 10 gallon I can swap to for one side, but my other betta is in a Flex so there is no filter I can move over with that guy. I can't risk any kind of flow or getting stuck on filter intakes with Goldie Blue, he's been beat to heck and needs a really calm environment, so taking him out of the Flex it seems like the sponge filter would probably be the safest choice. 

[Odd Duck]

I grew out some male bettas from a clutch way back in the day (late 90’s?) in divided 5 gallons (3 compartments in each tank).  I had undergravel filters in the tanks as the only filtration besides a chunk of Java ferns in each section.  The dividers weren’t as opaque as they should have been (in retrospect) but they did circulate well with an uplift tube in each back corner and no uplift in the center section).

The boys would absolutely yeet themselves over the dividers during water changes if they could.  I had a couple yeet themselves out and carpet surf, too, with only a very skinny gap at the back - just barely enough for the airline (even slightly pinched the airline to narrow the gap as much as possible).  Betta boys like to yeet.

[Flumpweesel]

I divided fluval chi using some plastic canvas for two female bettas. That has an overhead filter in the center of the tank so I didn't worry about increasing the filtration.

I am currently trying sponge filters for the first time and I'm pretty happy with it and they will be great for bettas because of the gentle flow 

[Fonske]

On 2/5/2023 at 3:26 AM, Goldie Blue said:

'll give the sponge filters a go and see how I like it. I have a small nano canister I use for my 10 gallon I can swap to for one side, but my other betta is in a Flex so there is no filter I can move over with that guy. I can't risk any kind of flow or getting stuck on filter intakes with Goldie Blue, he's been beat to heck and needs a really calm environment, so taking him out of the Flex it seems like the sponge filter would probably be the safest choice. 

Frankly, if the tank is densely planted (and has at least some healthy fast-growing plants in each section) I think there is little need for any filter. My impression is that bettas are the happiest in tanks with no flow at all. Again, if the tanks have a lot of thriving live plants and good water quality. 

(Out of habit,  I still clean sponges in my tiny filters in the betta tanks, but they are never dirty anyways and there is no bacterial mass there, so the filtration is primarily done by the plants, the tank walls and the substrate.)