Unfortunately I don't have another tank to put him in. Missus is already preparing to beat me with a rolling pin when I next mention a nano tank for a betta again.
I'll see how he fairs. The pipe idea is a good one and should give him somewhere to hangout at least.
Right, here goes my fish version of Dynasty... In terms of numbers discounting any fry... right now I have five males and five females in there. I purchased 6 orange flash from Maidenhead Aquatics, 2 males and 4 females. I thought this was a nice balanced number but there became a problem very quickly, the father of the fry was nipping and chasing the other smaller male, this was before there was any fry in the tank. Lesson: Either a sole male or three males should have been purchased; all around the same size. At this stage only one of the males had super long pectoral fins with a nice light blue hue and had a deep blue colour along his body. The other seemed pale yellow and was often seen with a split down his tail at some stage or another. I thought I would try to diffuse some of the aggression and ordered two double red apistogramma's having made a rookie mistake; not asking the seller questions. I ended up with a male and a female (I was hoping for two males... I've never seen a female double red unless she carries the trait...) and these guys were small, like almost freshly our of their juvenile colourless lives and beginning their coloured up lives as young adults. This gave the first and second original males a target, sadly a very small one who spent most of his time hiding. Around this time two females had fry from the then dominant male.
A few weeks later I found another seller only this time I asked questions and asked for pictures. I received two very large males. "Matt Daaaammooooon" is the biggest and dominant one now, with only his brother sometimes challenging and failing. There are no damaged fins on either of these. "Matt Daaaammooooon" has developed larger pectoral fins with the blue hue, but his brothers have also started to grow in a little. The original smaller orange flash is now bigger than the original dominant orange flash and he has the longest pectoral fins relative to his body size. I think it's probably this guy dishing out some revenge on the original dominant. The juvenile double red now no longer gets bullied by anything. He gets chased off by females from time to time but his fins are well developed (healed from being split multiple times) and he's developing some heft since I first bought him. None of the larger two double reds are annoyed by his presence and will eat alongside him.
From the two lots of fry I had, one brood was stolen by the other mother. There are two lots of fry that have basically now been left to fend for themselves and between the two original broods I have an extremely broad range of sizes from tiny 5mm ones to 2-2.5cm ones (though there are few at this size, potentially only the one). My response to throw more fish at the problem was a silly one. I've already had a discussion with a local pet shop, probably about two-three weeks ago about them taking the original two males and they've said they would be happy to, only I can't catch both of them at the same time for the life of me. I thought I was stressing all my fish out with the males darting down into the foliage and me disturbing everything trying to catch them. so for now I thought I'd leave them be. My youngest son likes the two orange ones... That said, he hardly sits in the room with the aquarium, so I'm not totally against taking them to the store.
I'll go take a breath now.