Male turquoise rainbowfish doesn't school

Hello fish lovers

I recently purchased my very first rainbow fishes over a week ago : 2female turquoise, 1 male turquoise and 4 male red rainbows (I wasn't sure of the sex of the red rainbows at the time and they all looked the same at my LFS. Turns out they don't sell females..). So now I have 5 males and only 2 females! From what I know, that's really not the ideal combination as males can get feisty with each other. Should I get more females or just leave it as is?

My male turquoise, which I'm pretty sure is the alpha male (even tho he's slightly smaller than the rest of them lol) never with the rest of the rainbows and doesn't seem interested whatsoever in schooling. He swims by himself all day long and occasionally chase any rainbow who tries to go near him or occasionally flashes at the females. He already has "his" swimming spot where no other rainbows are allowed.
I was wondering if it was normal that my male turquoise rainbow fish doesn't school with the other rainbow fishes? Should I worry?

in advance for the advice

Here's extra info on my tank for those wondering:
moderately planted 55g, 1 angelfish pair, 1 bristlenose, 1 siamese algae eater, 2 yoyo loaches, 1 angelicus botia, 1 clown loach (I will eventually need to upgrade my tank when he gets bigger), 3 turquoise rainbows and 4 red rainbows. All of these fishes have been in my tank for 2 years now except for the rainbowfishes and SAE.

I'm new on this forum so still getting the hang of it. Any kind of knowledge/advice will be happily accepted

 

they really need to school with their own species and not others. id get 3 more turqoiuse

 

Welcome to fishlore!
Rainbows do school with other rainbows. Ask jdhef. Not sure why yours isn't....

 

Welcome to FishLore!

My Rainbows school loosely. It isn't uncommon for one or two to be off on it's own.

 

I second jdhef, usually my praecox's will usually have a couple branch off, but 90% of the time they school
also, just a suggestion, you might want to get more loaches, as they prefer to be in schools .

 

Thank you so much to everyone for your great feedback
It really reassures me now that I know it's not uncommon for a rainbow to wonder on his own. Maybe he just likes being a loner

As for the 5males:2females ratio, any comments? They're still young (about 1.5-2inches), so I haven't seem much aggression between the males.

Per...My 4 loaches have been together for about 2 years and they're all about the same size (with the clown being a little bigger). They do swim and play together (and with the other fishes too ) and seem very happy. I though a school of 4loaches was fine but I may be wrong... Any one else think I should add more loaches? if so, what kind of loach? I wouldn't want to overload my aquarium either... I don't know if I have much room to play with now. Thanks again

 

My LFS has a great selection of Rainbow Fish, but recently, the only sell them in M/F pairs. But my tank has all males. So the last time I needed to replace a Rainbow I wanted just one male boeseman's. But they insisted I buy two. I said, look I pay for two, but I just want the one male. They still wouldn't go for it. So I picked the worst looking female in the tank. As expected, she died after a rather short time, so I'm back to all male.

But while she was alive, there were no aggression issues, but that may only have been because she was sickly. I would say, just keep an eye on things and see what happens.

 

Thank you so much to everyone for your great feedback
It really reassures me now that I know it's not uncommon for a rainbow to wonder on his own. Maybe he just likes being a loner

As for the 5males:2females ratio, any comments? They're still young (about 1.5-2inches), so I haven't seem much aggression between the males.

Per...My 4 loaches have been together for about 2 years and they're all about the same size (with the clown being a little bigger). They do swim and play together (and with the other fishes too ) and seem very happy. I though a school of 4loaches was fine but I may be wrong... Any one else think I should add more loaches? if so, what kind of loach? I wouldn't want to overload my aquarium either... I don't know if I have much room to play with now. Thanks again

it's better to have a bunch of loaches of the same species, but if yours seem fine and act normal, then I guess your pretty good
I'm terrible at telling when I tank is overstocked, hopefully someone else can tell you if you can add more rainbows or loaches

 

Sounds good, that's what I was thinking of doing !
As for your lfs, are you serious? I don't see the logic in imposing someone to buy a pair...
Thing could of easily gone wrong with a single female in an all male tank. Glad it didn't but so sorry for that little female who passed never a fun thing to experience.

Thanks Per
I'm never sure either if a tank is overloaded or not, that's why I always try to resist the temptation of buying more fishes.. Less is sometimes more lol
I thought my tank was at its maximum capacity now but again, not sure about that one.

 

Sounds good, that's what I was thinking of doing !
As for your lfs, are you serious? I don't see the logic in imposing someone to buy a pair...
Thing could of easily gone wrong with a single female in an all male tank. Glad it didn't but so sorry for that little female who passed never a fun thing to experience.

Yeah, serious. Yes it could have gone bad, but I was counting on the female not living too long.

 

In my experience, female predate eggs more than males and having the recommended ratio means there are no eggs unless your their all the time. A 3:1 male female ratio allows for higher harvest numbers of eggs, as well as some more colorful males. Course your loaches will wipe out eggs extremely fast. You should stick to one species of loach or get at least 3 each. Btw, rainbows don't school , they shoal, there is a difference between the two. Part of which is why you have a loner in the group.

 

Male rainbows in my experience can be pretty territorial. All fish are different and have different personalities. When I first got my australian rainbows my male almost killed the others but eventually learned to tolerate AND school with them. Hope this helps!