miraloma

My 2 male guppies are really aggressive toward my platys, a male and a female. Originally, I had one tank for the guppies and one tank for the platys. But, it turns out that the platy tank has water quality issues so I have to put them in the same tank temporarily. As soon as I put the platys into the guppy tank, the guppies are going after the platys. The guppies like to gang up on the platys one at a time. They would go after one while the other one hides. Then they would switch and bother the other one. What's going on? I thought both guppies and platys are peaceful and compatible fish to have in a community tank. Honestly, they need to get along because even though I have 2 tanks, one of them is going to be a shrimp only tank. So, if they can't get along, I'm going to have to get rid of someone. The tank that they eventually will go in is only 6.6 gallons. So, I can't get additional fish without adversely affecting the bio-load. Any suggestion on what I should do?

A video sample of what they do to the male platy: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=miralomasf titled "guppy bully"

0morrokh

Since you just added the Platys, the Gups are probably trying to assert their dominance to their new tankmate. Things may settle down over time. However, it is a problem having just one female and three males. The female will constantly be harassed by all the males (the Gups will go after her too since there isn't a Guppy female). You should either have all males or a ratio of at least 2 females per male.

COBettaCouple

I'd agree. Guppies are lovers and part of the issue may be that there are 3 males and 1 female and the guppies will try to romance just about any female fish and they may be viewing the male platy as a rival. Right now, we have 2 male guppies in a tank with platys, but there are 5 female platys so the guppies pretty much leave them alone.

armadillo

Oh I would swear that that is the issue, actually.
With livebearers, the ratio should be about 1 male to 2 or even 3 females. I had the same problems and things totally stabilised when I got more females.

miraloma

I bought a new 28 gallon tank yesterday so that I can have more fish, i.e. more girls for the horny boys. In a few weeks, I will be able to help the boy to girl ratio. In the mean time, I think the girl platy's got fry 'cause I see little black dots in her belly. I've counted 5 so far. I wonder how long it would be before she drops fry...

miraloma

According to the manufacturer's instruction, I could have 2-3 fish per 10 gallon of water to start cycling. So I went and bought 6 female guppies today. When I put the other 2 male guppies in the same tank with the girls, they didn't seem to care very much. They were still kind of going after the platys. I wonder if it's become a habit that they like to chase the platys...
So, now in my brand new 28 gallon tank, I've got 2 male guppies, 6 female guppies, 1 male platy and 1 female platy. Seems a bit too crowded but my other tanks are either not ready for fish or with fry, which were just born _tonight_!! So for the sake of the survival of the fry, I opted to put all the adults in the new tank. I hope they survive! I counted up to 7. I'm hoping there are more...

PS: last count 12 fry!

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COBettaCouple

Using Prime to treat your water and doing frequent partial water changes should help the fish not have as much toxins stress. The cycling will take a little longer, but you'll have fish in better shape.

With the fry, if you can add liquid vitamins like VitaChem or even a garlic supplement with Vitamin C it will help lower the chances of scoliosis.