Just added new fish, now concerned

[Odd Duck]

I would bet that you could add just 1-2 more male guppies and solve your behavior issues.  Still reasonable in bioload for your tank since male guppies are pretty light bodied.

[nabokovfan87]

On 6/3/2023 at 4:23 PM, schmofam said:

I can sell any babies to the fish store. I'm willing to do whatever is best to make a peaceful tank. If All males, what do you think then would be the max amount of fish for this tank?

I personally haven't had a lot of experience with livebearers.  I had to recently deal with it in my own tanks as I have some newly acquired swordtails.  I had 3 males in the big tank and they were very fiesty at first.  I tried to calm things down and then got them to be very good buddies for a few months.  One day out of nowhere one of them has no sword and they other two bullying the dom male. 

I would assume having 7-9 of them is a good place to be if you go male only.  I believe that you want to have an odd number of them.

If you do have a place to sell the fish then I think your best setup will be to have 2-3 males and 4-6 females.  It gives you some genetic variation and you will likely be able to choose a few more that you wish for out of the fry.

On 6/3/2023 at 6:17 PM, Odd Duck said:

I would bet that you could add just 1-2 more male guppies and solve your behavior issues.  Still reasonable in bioload for your tank since male guppies are pretty light bodied.

100% and the males should be the ones with the flashy colors 🙂

[schmofam]

Quickly for clarification, I have 4 guppies and 4 platys.

Here’s my plan then- I’m going to get 2 male guppies and a platy. I’m also going to get some more plants for cover and bio load. I’ll keep checking my levels and see how it goes then go from there.

Thanks for the input and I’ll let you know what happens.

[Lennie]

A lil bit a different opinion than others:

But I think, guppies also have characters. I feel like a bully can be a bully and may need to be timed out or separated.

You can give crowding a try, but I think keeping all males is against their nature and is never guaranteed to succeed. Even not as common, females may even have issues as well. I have 7 guppy tanks and 1 endler tanks, and only in one tank, there is a bully female. The male to female ratio is 2m:6f. I'm trying to see if it is all about establishing a pecking order, or an actually bully behavior.

It feels like a betta sorority or cichlid tank to me. crowding may help, but at the end, a bully can remain as a bully and may need to be seperated. Crowding does not guarantee a success imo. But should increase the chance of success I guess

Edited June 4, 2023 by Lennie

[PineSong]

I’ve had all male guppy tanks with a lot of harassment, so I know the feeling. I hated watching chasing.
 

That said, I would avoid adding females as a “solution” because it’s an ongoing labor forever to keep up with them— you will hate trying to catch fry in a scaped 10g tank— rather than a solution that just solves the problem. And the males will harass the heck out of the females, especially guppies.  
 

I’ve had good luck with removing the harasser and putting him in another tank  or in a breeder box for a couple days then reintroducing him. The territory won’t feel “his” anymore and harassment may be gone. 
 

Also, with lots of plants in the tank, you can have more fish, so adding more males is an ok option.  The 1 inch of fish per gallon rule came from the days of sterile plastic plant tanks and isn’t the best guideline to go by— there are a lot of tank factors to go by and in a 10g I’d feel comfy having around fifteen fish especially if most are guppies.

[Torrey]

On 6/3/2023 at 5:23 PM, schmofam said:

can sell any babies to the fish store. I'm willing to do whatever is best to make a peaceful tank. If All males, what do you think then would be the max amount of fish for this tank?

I wouldn't get females for a 10 gallon scaped tank...unless you are willing to take it apart and rescape every 4 to 6 months.

That picture I posted of the water lettuce roots? That's a 10 gallon tank😅

I currently have 6 platinum endler/guppy cross bachelors in a 3 gallon tank, so heavily planted I rarely get to see all of them at once (I need to trim again, I am slowly recuperating from pneumonia)

Originally there were a dozen in there, but I sold 3 and the 3 best went to breed with my new platinum female. The remaining 6 didn't keep the pure platinum color I was going for.

With plants, and how small the bioload is off of male endler/guppy hybrids, 3 males/ gallon is very reasonable.

Platies are a bit bigger, and have a wider size range and appetite, in my experience.

As long as you don't accidentally add a female, and don't overfeed for the amount of fish and plants, your tank should be okay with 2 - 3 male guppies/ guppy gallon and 1 - 2 platies/platy gallon. And good amount of plants.

[sumplkrum]

On 6/3/2023 at 11:10 PM, schmofam said:

Here’s my plan then- I’m going to get 2 male guppies and a platy. I’m also going to get some more plants for cover and bio load. I’ll keep checking my levels and see how it goes then go from there.

Thanks for the input and I’ll let you know what happens.

Don't be alarmed about the behavior of the guppy males. It's horny competition, not really aggression.
Them going after the Platties also isn't really surprising. It's the closest thing to a female they have in the tank.

Adding guppy females will also not stop them from chasing. They're still going to do their thing. You'd just have the added complication of constant babies.

Adding a bunch more plants will give chased fish a break so they don't get exhausted and stressed. Simple solution.
Your tank also looks a little bright to me. Some floating plants wouldn't hurt to diffuse some of the light and ward off algae.

Good luck.

[Odd Duck]

Lots of good advice here and it’s all right even when some of it is different.  Everyone has made good points and you may have to try all of it to see what works best for your fish and tank.  Usually with guppies if you have a big enough group to disperse aggression/chasing it’s sufficient.  But you can absolutely have bullies, too, and more plants to break up sight lines and time out to change territories can be very helpful.  I had a pea puffer for a time that was a horrible bully even among pea puffers.  He finally had to be relegated to his very own tank for the rest of his life.  Guppies aren’t usually mean, just very persistent because that’s hard wired into them and they don’t really have anything else they need to do.  🤷🏻‍♀️ 

[schmofam]

I now have my new fish, all male. Shortly after I put them in I saw that one of the platys wasn't eating. The next day he died. I'm not sure why that was. I double-checked my params they were fine. I took it back to the fish store, and they tested the water and gave me a new one. That one now (from the same tank at the store ) didn't eat this morning. I'm not sure if it's correlated.

Besides this, it appears the guppy aggression is under control. I now need to focus my attention on one smaller platy harassing a bigger one. If it continues I'll take that one back and exchange it for a different one.

Edited June 7, 2023 by schmofam

[PineSong]

On 6/7/2023 at 11:54 AM, schmofam said:

I now have my new fish, all male. Shortly after I put them in I saw that one of the platys wasn't eating. The next day he died. I'm not sure why that was. I double-checked my params they were fine. I took it back to the fish store, and they tested the water and gave me a new one. That one now (from the same tank at the store ) didn't eat this morning. I'm not sure if it's correlated.

Besides this, it appears the guppy aggression is under control. I now need to focus my attention on one smaller platy harassing a bigger one. If it continues I'll take that one back and exchange it for a different one.

Putting new fish from the store in your tank is risky. You may want to set up a temporary QT tanks for new fish before adding them to your existing setup. Here's a great vid Irene did showing how: 

 

[schmofam]

On 6/7/2023 at 11:15 AM, PineSong said:

Putting new fish from the store in your tank is risky. You may want to set up a temporary QT tanks for new fish before adding them to your existing setup.

I've seen this before. What I did do was use the quarantine trio that I have seen on the Co-Op Youtube channel but I understand that's not optimal compared to an actual tank.