looking for a cool wet pet to put in a five or ten gallon aquarium that isn't a betta fish?
then i've got five suggestions that you're going to want to try
hi i'm Irene with girl talks fish and i have a friend who came to me and she's trying to
set up a nano tank and she did not want to put a betta fish in because she thought they were
too commonplace and boring and i was like what they've got beautiful footage and cute little
grumpy faces but okay whatever so it got me thinking and that's how this list came about
first up on the list is gouramis specifically dwarf gouramis or honey gouramis they're very
similarly sized i would say ranging from two to three and a half inches depending on the species
and they come in all sorts of colors you've got kind of the regular blue and red type with the
striping the powder blue dwarf gouramis flame dwarf gouramis and then honey gouramis come
in a kind of yellow gold color because they are both labyrinth fish that means they like to take
kind of gulps of air on the surface i would say they have very similar behaviors as well they
like to kind of hang out on the upper third of the aquarium although really both of them will swim
all over the place they can make bubble nests when it is breeding season and then they like
to eat off of the surface as well so any kind of floating beta pellet freeze-dried foods or even
frozen foods that sink they'll take that as well also like betta fish i would say dwarf gouramis
are a little hit or miss when it comes to their aggressive nature they're a little bit territorial
so i've had dwarf gouramis in the past that got along just fine with mollies corydoras even forgot
a rainbow fish and then i have others that like attacked all the albino quarries in the aquarium
so it really depends on the fish just like with bettas honey gouramis i would say are
more peaceful though in general if that's what you're looking for really other than
their appearance being quite different because gouramis have that more roundish blimp shape
and those cool little feeler ventral fins their personality and behavior and needs i feel like are
very very similar so in my book the gouramis are very close substitute to what a betta fish is like
second on my list is pea puffers or dwarf puffers and i actually mentioned them recently in my video
about my honest review of five oddball nano fish but basically they are about
one inch long looks like a little yellow blimp with kind of splotches all over it very very
cute they are also a bit semi-aggressive in nature but you can keep them in a species-only aquarium
where it's only puffers in there and generally they should do okay if you have enough space
enough cover or blockage of line of sight and kind of the right ratio you definitely want
one male two lots of females if at all possible i also like how they just kind of have a cool
personality i find them to be very curious they're constantly coming up to look at things really
carefully inspect them and then the way they swim around is really neat it's kind of like a little
helicopter moving back and forth and up you know everywhere in the aquarium the main sticking point
you have to be aware of would be their diet they also like meaty carnivorous kind of diets but
they definitely prefer live and frozen foods over prepared foods so they're not going to be as easy
to feed as a betta fish so feed them things like live little snails black worms or maybe frozen
blood worms brine shrimp that kind of thing so if you're looking for a cool oddball fish to
keep instead of a betta this is a good one to try another cool betta fish alternative that is
slightly rarer unusual would be the scarlet badis or dario dario this fish is about an inch maybe
a little bit less long as well and they have a really bright coloration you'll notice that they
have red vertical stripes on them with some bright blue highlights especially on their ventral fins
similar to the pea puffer they also prefer live and frozen foods and don't take prepared foods as
easily so feed them things like you might have to have a micro worm culture they like that hatching
out baby brine shrimp maybe daphnia or you can do the frozen versions as well frozen daphnia cyclops
and smaller foods for them to take they too are also semi-aggressive i don't know why so many fish
and creatures on this list are semi-aggressive but unlike the pea puffers you usually can't find
females to purchase very easily in the fish stores because they're dropper in color so you can either
choose to get maybe one male and keep him alone or maybe keep him in a community tank that has
other really small peaceful community fish that won't out-compete him for food
once when i was at my local fish store i noticed there was a similar looking fish called the
black tiger dario i don't think it has an exact species name yet but it looked
really cool kind of similar to the scarlet bass but it was black in the front half
and then scarlet red in the back half pretty cool if you can find it for the next option on our list
i wanted to go with something a little different an invertebrate the Mexican dwarf crayfish
and it's also known as CPO based on an acronym of its species name but this little one and a
half inch crayfish is very very bright orange it's beautiful to look at and they're not shy they're
super active so you'll get a lot of entertainment watching him crawl around in your tank
i would say they are pretty opportunistic feeders so i wouldn't put them with any tank mates that
are small enough or slow with long flowy fins that they can grab and take a bite out of
instead since they're mostly on the bottom of the tank maybe look for a nano schooling fish that's
in the middle or top part of the tank that swims very fast so really any kind of tetra, rasbora,
danio they'll probably all do fine with him as for how many you can put in one tank i think it
really depends on the size of your nano tank because they can be pretty territorial and
fight amongst themselves so make sure to provide a lot of cover and don't be too surprised if you
see them lose a limb or two because hopefully they will regrow it the next time they molt
speaking of molting you know don't be scared if you accidentally see a what looks like a
dead crayfish in your aquarium because it might be just the shell so pick it up and see if it's empty
inside um but to encourage the growth of healthy exoskeletons if you have soft water like me make
sure they get plenty of minerals to make that new exoskeleton so you're going to want to add
something like cecum equilibrium or wonder shell and then feed them calcium enriched foods such as
Hikari crab cuisine another non-fish species that would be a good beneficial alternative would be
the African dwarf frog and this is actually the animal that my friend decided to end up going with
so they grow to about i don't i don't know two inches that's usually the ones i see um
maybe larger maybe smaller and they're kind of brown with some spots on them although there's
also lighter color versions that i don't know if they're albino or leucistic or what but they look
pretty cool as well they are fully aquatic but they still breathe air so you'll sometimes see
them jumping all the way up to the surface or sometimes floating near the surface so
they can easily breathe so make sure to keep that tight lid on the aquarium just in case
they are slower eaters so it might be good to have a species only nano tank with just a bunch of
frogs in there or maybe you can add like a really big mystery snail to kind of act as the cleanup
crew but make sure it's big enough that the frog can't try to eat it like a lot of the animals on
this list they do prefer their live and frozen foods so feed them a meaty carnivorous diet of
you know live black worms frozen blood worms frozen brine shrimp and so on one of the cool
things is that the males will sometimes sing to the females to attract them so you may see
here this kind of buzzing wine i mean it clearly sounds like a frog so just don't be alarmed if you
hear that because clearly you're doing something right because they're in the mood to breed so what
is your favorite betta fish substitute or nano wet pet that you would recommend comment down below so