Male guppy after losing a mate

[Carmen]

Hi there 🙂

I had a male and 2 female guppies in the tank and recently the favourite female of the male died. 

Now i am noticing that the male guppy is not interested in mating with the other females in the tank. I also added 2 more females but nothing. 

He stays wondering alone at the top of the tank. 

Could it be that he still "misses" her or waiting for her? She died about 2 weeks ago. Should i wait more or maybe i can do something to help him snap out of it like moving him out of the tank and placing him back in a few days? 

Thanks 🙂

 

[MJV Aquatics]

We don't think of fish as monogamous but then I've seen a lot of amazing videos of fish and animals that have far more compassion than we often credit them for. I was driving home one night and on the side of the road I saw a young racoon that had been killed most likely by a car. It looked like a sibling was frantically trying to get his/her brother/sister to get up and go...sadly to no avail. It was a real heart breaker. 'Critters' have feelings too.

I don't really have any advice other than to just let it play out in time.

[Guppysnail]

That happened to my one boy. His girl had pregnancy issues with a stuck fry (for lack of better term) and passed. He glass suffered furiously for a few days. I moved over him to the pleco tank alone for a few weeks then reintroduced him to a new group of my girls that came of age and he is fine now. Not sure how helpful that is or if he was a one off but thought I would share the experience 

[NanoNano]

I had something similar happen with a male Betta when the female Betta (that he was totally infatuated with) that he could see in an adjoining tank died suddenly.  The male Betta certainly looked like he was going through a grieving process- becoming listless and refusing to eat for over a week.  In my case,  the Betta floated at the surface with his dorsal fin in contact with the air,  which caused it to become damaged and wither- so I'd recommend doing a "head to tail" visual study of "your guy" a couple times a day.  The advice from others here is sound...My teenager told me that the Betta needed to "get his game on again" and went out and got a big beautiful Elephant Ear female Betta and placed it in the adjoining tank.  The male pretended to be not interested in her for a couple of days,  but soon he came around after returned to normal behavior.  Good luck- hope your guy gets back to being his old self soon.

Edited August 20, 2021 by NanoNano