Now Play Nice!

Hm.. I don't know how to explain this.. but uh, I walked into my room where I keep my tank, and well I witnessed a murder. My male pineapple swordtail was viciously ramming into one of my male guppies, within seconds the guppy was on its way to fishy heaven.. I mean what the heck man, I thought the these were peaceful fish, at least that is what LPS said..

 

Some community fish are just mean... if I were you, I'd get rid of the swordtail. Otherwise, there may be more fatalities. By the way, how many females do you have? The aggression may be the result of too few females. The best thing to do is to have either no girls, or have at least 2 for every boy.

 

Well I have a female pineapple swordtail to accompany the male; a red/blue tetra; and I had two male/ two female guppies because my LPS was selling them as pairs. So everybody has a female.. but I'm wondering if its just a dominance thing because my other guppy seems to have its tails nipped! But I didn't see that happen so I don't know what that's from.

 

Tanks's too small.

 

I would still get rid of the male. If you want, get another male and female swordtail, that would improve the ratio. Try to get more female guppies- if this store doesn't sell them singly, you can probably find another that does, quite easily.

The red/ blue tetra is a neon tetra or a cardinal tetra- if it's a neon the red stripe will only go half way down the length of it's body, ending before it reaches the tail. Regardless, all tetras like to be in schools, so I would recommend either getting rid of it, or getting 4 or 5 more. If it's your 10 gallon tank, you should get rid of it, because more will be pushing your bioload. Also, if it is on;y 10 gallons, the aggression may be because it is too small.

Furthermore, do you know about the nitrogen cycle? It is an essential bit of information in the fish keeping hobby.

 

Tanks's too small.

Indeed. Swords get pretty big, and as you've seen, rather aggressive at times. 30 gallons is the minimum for these guys.

 

I don’t even keep just pairs in my breeder tanks because of the stress that the females are subjected to. With any livebearer you want to have one male to a minimum of 3 females and more is better. I keep one male and 6 to 10 females in all my breeder tanks that way no one female gets all the attention of the male.