Guppies agression 😔

[Karen B.]

Do you know Murphy’s law "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong" ? Well, it loves me, and especially with aquariums! Don’t beleive me? I had such an agressive White Cloud Mountain Minmows, he injured my 7 other males...

So of course even if everywhere it is said how it’s perfectly fine to have an all males guppy tank... well mine became extremely agressive. I rehomed the first one, but then a second one became agressive. They only bully one particular guppy - it got so stressed I moved it in another tank with the other peaceful guppy. The aggressive one is still swimming around the tank always following the same pattern rather erratically. 

Question - what can I do to calm down my current agressive guppy? I only have 3 left in my 10 gallons, planted with hides. I will get about 4 more males today, hoping it dilutes the agression.

Or I could get females but wouldn’t it be a bit overcrowded? Plus I read breeding can be a bit violent at times. And the female guppies... are they bond to be pregnant every months until the end of their life? Must you retire them at some point? Or do they become infertile?

[KaitieG]

I don't have any great suggestions--hopefully someone will!  But my experience when I separated out into a male only guppy tank was that my dark blue/black ones picked on my rainbow tailed ones.  No idea why, but it was extremely consistent.  They were the only ones who got fin-nipped and chased.  Some must just be more aggressive than others.

If you get females, I haven't noticed anything violent when they breed, and they all seemed fine living together.  Noticeably less aggressive than the male only tank.  You'll just get tons of fry.  Forever.  If they don't have lots of hiding places and/or you keep the other fish on the hungry side, they might manage that population themselves.  Otherwise, my LFS takes my extras.

[Alesha]

This is going to seem counter-intuitive, but I would suggest to add lots more guppies. Yeah, I know, seems dumb, but I swear, when my tank was fulllllll of guppies, there was NO fighting. They were concentrating on getting their share of the food, and breeding. 

Right now, I have 12 male guppies in a 20 gallon long with 13 green tiger barbs. The guppies chase each other, but there's no hunting down and harming each other. They're too worried about not getting eaten by the barbs and getting their food. (And just so it doesn't worry anyone, I haven't lost any guppies to the barbs. They are just bigger, and the guppies naturally fear them a little bit. I say "little" because they don't run from the barbs. They are just careful about getting in their way when I feed them all! Ha!)

So...that's my advice. 😉 Take it for what it's worth...just one person's idea of what *might* work. 🙂