Anything more interesting than a betta?

I have a two and a half gallon, or maybe its three? I can't remember that used to hold a grumpy old betta who died a bit ago. I am wondering if anyone has any ideas of something more fun that can do well in such a small tank. It has a filter and a heater too so its not just a lil bowl. I want something that can thrive and not something that I would be punishing by making it live in there.

you can make it a planted tank with some shrimp

There are actually a few cherry shrimp in it atm. We are going to have to start selling the little guys cuz we have two breeding colonies of them! I am fine taking them out of that tank and putting them in the large community tank with the rest of the shrimp if I can figure out what to put in there.

Seems like a betta is the best bet for availability and compatibility with a small environment. There are some other fish you could try like a pygmy gourami, which looks kind of like a betta...

I was considering the pygmy/sparkling gourami actually. I had them years ago in a ten gallon and they were my favorite. I also was reading about a dario dario or scarlet badis... but like all things on the internet there is mixed info on how well one would work.

There are a lot of popular nano tank ideas for salt but not quite as much for freshwater. This link seemed to have ideas and links to other sites as well.

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My "nano" is a standard 2.5g with a lone male betta. I have a Hydor heater and an Azoo HOB filter for it.

neat link D. I think the zebra rasbora or pheonix rasbora would look fabulous with a plant or two in there.

A pair of Endlers would creat its own colony quickly. I have a single Endler with guppy grass and Cherry Shrimp in my 2.5g. It just keeps on keeping on. Of course the plant is so thick I can't see the Endler much of the time. I'm thinking of plopping a female in there with him. I too, have a second colony of shrimp. It's in a 10g tank with a bog log and baby Ancistris and overgrow with a varitey of plants.

Okay so I spent most of last night putting my history degree that is really a glorified research degree to work. Endlers are so pretty but after a horrible experience with the plain old fancy guppies (they got into the filter somehow..) I am leery of getting them. I found lots of lists like the one previously posted, and it seems they all have a few common ones.

Ember tetras, chili rasboras, phoenix, microrasboras, dwarf rasboras, pygmy gouramis and lastly the dario dario/scarlet badis. I can honestly say I do not recall ever seeing any of these fish in stores except the pygmy sparkling gouramis. Anyone know where I could find them? I can try to special order from the petstore in ellensburg... but that hasnt worked out well in the past.

I keep Heterandria Formosa, a tiny live-bearer, and they'd most likely be fine in a 2.5g, as long as you limit the numbers. I'm considering putting a number of males in my 2.5g Walstad tank since they only get up to 3/4" max. The females grow up to 1.5", which would be okay if you have only 1 and some decent filtration. If you have both sexes you'll have to remove fry of course.