Female Agression

[DakkaKat]

Hey all

I have about a ten galleon tank, heavily planted, with 3 female fighters and about 10 guppies. At first the females picked on the guppies but once we bought more I presume they felt outnumbered and have since left the gupies alone.

Now though My females seem to be turning on eachother and the guppies again... One in particular [green] flares and bites one of my other females [red] but the red female is also dominating to the Blue. I now have to keep all three seperate, the third [blue] is still in with the guppies.

No serious fin damage has occured to the fighters, just a few nibbles. But recently we found one of my guppies tail half eaten! It was very unexpected since they have all been getting along better.

Any advice or knowledge is welcome :blush:

Edited September 9, 2010 by Dakka

[delyall]

Im hoping the guppies are all the same sex.. unless you want a massive guppy explosion

Errm, have the bettas got hiding places? whats in the tank with them? I dont really like the idea of guppies with bettas, especially in such a small tank..

Your also going to get aggression with such a small amount of females.. any less than 4 doesnt seem to work, unless you have a mass of hidey spots and/or a large tank and/or pansy females :P

[DakkaKat]

Theres 9 males some place 2 female guppies Both pregnant, ofcourse! The betta were in there to help control the population after I read somewhere thats a rather popular method of Popn control.

So the ideal thing to do is buy the betta a seperate tank and add a few more to the group? There are several big plants in there, plenty of spots to tuck away and hide. It's impossible to see all the fish at one time plus they have a large log to scurry into.

Edited September 9, 2010 by Dakka

[delyall]

Whoa The best ratio for guppies is 1 male to every 2 females Im surprised your females are still alive, as males tend to hassle them a lot.. and with 9 males to 2 females.. whooooa.. Im not guppy expert, but that doesnt sound too good..

If you want to keep both guppies and the female bettas, get a bigger tank. They can live together, but they need hiding spots and more room.. but seriously, do some research on guppies, cause something has to change there..

[Kiinks]

I only have 2 females in my tank. When I introduced Little One to the tank, Pika would flare at her, chase her around, and Little One got a pretty badly nipped tail. But after a few days they got along fine. Moved them to a 110L tank, heaps of rocks and well planted, but they always seem to stick together and don't fight. Little One tries to flare at Pika on occasion, but just gets flared back at and sometimes chased, but that's the most of it. It'll be interesting to see the pecking order established when I add a few more females to the tank. Also I have wanted to add a few guppies, but I've had a lot of mixed opinions about them, so I've held off for now.