What to do?

[jackie]

Are all your tanks bettas? If you exchange him for a female betta, you are not lessening the load, three tanks will still be in use.

[IRescue452]

No, I have a tank for my goldfish of four years and one with two female bettas.

[Jessika]

Bettas can live in conjunction with other community fish so long as they aren't aggressive or fin-nippers. I believe that male bettas CAN be in a tank with goldfish... why not just move him to another tank?

[IRescue452]

I'd love to but he's pretty aggressive. They have different water preferences too, the goldfish is in colder, filtered water with lots of water agitation. I couldn't take away the filter as the ammonia and nitrate levels would build up and I won't use chlor-out in the goldfish tank because when I did use it the goldfish got real sickly. I don't think that a male betta can live with females, it'd be too stressful on the fish.

[Jessika]

Yeah you can't put the male with the females because it would stress them out and the females might actually die if he tries mating with them and "beats them up" too much.

Goldfish are partial to colder waters but can survive in warmer waters as well. And of course male bettas are aggressive but only toward other aggressive fish. My manager while I was at PetCo had a huge tank full of a wide hodgepodge of fish -- "sharks", one male betta, goldfish, mollies, tetras, plecostomus (did I even spell that right) and all sorts of other stuff and they all lived in conjunction of one another. Now that isn't smart of course but it was just odd that it worked out