So, I was tired of taking care of two tanks (a 10g and 6g), cuz the
10g was a little over stocked, thus requiring extra care, and the 6g
(planted, w/ betta) was growing every algae known to man (cuz I don't
know how to take care of plants, I suppose, and I don't really relish
experimenting with a poor fishy in there...).

So I decided a 50g was the answer. :-)

So, we got the 50g and I got it all set up (fake plants & various
decorations + a nice piece of drift wood). I let it go for a day and
then transferred the filters and fish from the 10g (6 neon tetras, 5
harlequin rasboras and 2 otos). I let them get used to it for a
couple hours (yes, I'm impatient) and then the experiment began...

I captured Dart, the betta, from his 6g isolation tank and put him
in. The curious rasboras immediately came over to say hi and he
promptly flared at them and chased them away. For about the past 2
hours, he's been exploring: got his tail caught on the filter intake a
few times - I think he's learning; has covered most of the tank and I
think he's figuring out the currents (at least some of his surfing
seemed involuntary g). Ah! And he just discovered that there's an
inside to the big tree-stump + mushrooms decoration! I was hoping
this might become the betta cave!

And, of course, he's continuing to chase everyone (though not flaring
all the time). His favorites, at present are the otos - he seems to
think they're the slowest, maybe because they wait until he's almost
there before they swim away. It appears that the rasboras
occasionally run interference for the poor otos (can't be sure of it,
but that's what it looks like). Perhaps this is why his second
favorite targets are the rasboras - who are much too fast for him, but
he still seems to want to herd them about the tank. He doesn't seem
very interested in the neons - nor they in him. For the first little
while, the neons hung out together at the bottom and only moved to
avoid him. Now they're swimming about in the middle, tending to stay
near the rasboras, but the mutual disinterest continues.

I'm not sure how long to let this go on - I'm hoping we can all calm
down and live in peace... But I guess we'll see how things are at
dinner time.

On the up side, everyone's colors are really bright right now! :-/

Updates will be posted until things calm down.

Liz

PS: There's too much daylight right now for a good pic, but here's an
OK one:

http://www.lizmcguireonline.com/fish/50g.jpg

(You can just barely see the end of Dart's tail as he goes past the
filter intake behind and on the right of the stump/shrooms
decoration.)