Can I Keep A Single Sex Group?

[Lizzie71]

I have a brand new 34 litre tank, no fish yet. I want to start cycling with a few hardy fish, probably guppies or platies. Plan is to acquire the first small group on Saturday.

As I only have this one small tank and the fish are intended as a hobby for my 7 year old, I am keen to avoid breeding for the foreseeable future.

Is it acceptable to keep these fish in single sex groups? Or is there another way to stop them breeding (guessing you can't put them on the pill lol)?

If you can keep them in single sex groups, are boys or girls better?

 

[modaz]

FISHLESS CYCLE ONLY.............. quite easy to do and will save the lives of the fish, guppies and platy are NOT cycling fish, infact none are, most people get confused to what HARDY are ued for, they are used as the first fish to be placed in your tank once the cycling has been completed, this is to allow the filter to get used to the amount of waste building up and should be done gradually, then after time you can add more fish, guppies are one of the last fish to be added to a cycled tank.

Are you in the uk? if you are i will send you some filter media by post (free) so you can speed up your cycling. this will add the bacteria needed instantly and you can add the platy 2 days later after a water change and then the guppies a few days after the platy whilst keeping an eye on the water stats.

To answer your question though, yes all male groups work really well with no problems, all females are fine but male gups are alot more colourful as we all know

 

[Lizzie71]

FISHLESS CYCLE ONLY.............. quite easy to do and will save the lives of the fish, guppies and platy are NOT cycling fish, infact none are, most people get confused to what HARDY are ued for, they are used as the first fish to be placed in your tank once the cycling has been completed, this is to allow the filter to get used to the amount of waste building up and should be done gradually, then after time you can add more fish, guppies are one of the last fish to be added to a cycled tank.

Are you in the uk? if you are i will send you some filter media by post (free) so you can speed up your cycling. this will add the bacteria needed instantly and you can add the platy 2 days later after a water change and then the guppies a few days after the platy whilst keeping an eye on the water stats.

To answer your question though, yes all male groups work really well with no problems, all females are fine but male gups are alot more colourful as we all know

Thanks that's a really kind offer. Yes I'm in the UK, I'll PM you with details. As I said, the aquarium is a hobby for my 7 year old and he is absolutely desperate to get started. I think we'll try a few male platies and see how we go. I also want to get some neon tetra or similar once we are up and running, but I'm thinking of waiting a couple of weeks to make sure we can keep the first group happy before we get too many more.

I've ordered a water testing kit today so that should be here by the time I get my first fish.

 

[dwarfgourami]

Just one point- some male platies can be aggressive, so it is a good idea to have a larger group (5+) rather than a smaller, to spread aggression.
Male guppies might be better, given the small size of your tank- you could keep 5 of them and still have room for one more species. 5 platies would pretty well stock the tank.
Another option would be female platies; they tend to be more peaceful so you could limit yourself to 2 or 3. The only risk here is that they may be pregnant from the shop.

 

[Lizzie71]

Just one point- some male platies can be aggressive, so it is a good idea to have a larger group (5+) rather than a smaller, to spread aggression.
Male guppies might be better, given the small size of your tank- you could keep 5 of them and still have room for one more species. 5 platies would pretty well stock the tank.
Another option would be female platies; they tend to be more peaceful so you could limit yourself to 2 or 3. The only risk here is that they may be pregnant from the shop.

Looks like a group of male guppies and some tetras then. Sounds like a plan!

 

[theotheragentm]

Tetras are fin nippers generally. Take a look at Harlequin Rasboras as an option.

 

[Lizzie71]

Tetras are fin nippers generally. Take a look at Harlequin Rasboras as an option.

Yes, I was just looking at these. So many choices, it's so difficult! I would like about 4 fish that would grow 1.5 to 2 inches, maybe honey gouramis or guppies or possibly small danios. Plus a group of maybe 6 smaller fish like rasboras or maybe endlers.

It needs to be a selection of peaceful fish, and as colourful as possible as it is mainly for the children.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

I would advise an all-male group of guppys, the more of them the better too.

For a while, i had a group of 18male guppys in the same tank together, they did fine together. Male guppys will try to mate with each other though, its partly an act of dominance over each other to help maintain the pecking order but is also probably just also because they have such a high sex drive.

The best thing to do if you are getting an all-male group of is to get males that have the same tail type of body physique to each other, as mixing varieties of guppys like the delicate slower swimming delta tailed males, with robust shorter tail standard vareities of guppys, can end up with the more delicate delta tails getting picked on too much by the tougher and faster swimming males.


With all-female groups of guppys, the only way to ensure there are no pregnancies is to get very young females which have never mated with male guppys before, however this can be difficult as they may have already bred with their sibling brothers- the only way to prevent this is to separate any guppys which look like they could turn into males (i.e. young guppys in the fry group which are developing brighter colours and patterns quicker than the rest of the group or are starting to develop more pointed looking anal fins) as they are growing up.

Either that, or you could just buy some females from your lfs and keep them in an all-female group and just wait to finish doing all of their pregnancies until they no longer have any sperm left in them.


All-male groups of guppys can be a little risky as before mentioned, but keeping guppys in mixed-gender groups is not such a bad thing- if you get any fry, you could always rehome them on the forum or to any lfs that agree to take them off your hands .


If you do choose to have an all-male group of guppys, i would advise having about 7 males together in the tank .

 

[modaz]

filter media, will be there day after tomorrow.

yes females are slightly more placid that male platys, male platys are not aggressive,towards eachother its just that some people think they are and dont understand the pecking order.

when adding males guppies you need to add a pair or multis of 2, this is b/c they pair up eventually, when you loose a guppy and you want to add more you will have to add 3 as you cant add 1 on its own as it will picked on and adding 3 will stop this problem. if that make any sense lol.

 

[Lizzie71]

filter media, will be there day after tomorrow.

yes females are slightly more placid that male platys, male platys are not aggressive,towards eachother its just that some people think they are and dont understand the pecking order.

when adding males guppies you need to add a pair or multis of 2, this is b/c they pair up eventually, when you loose a guppy and you want to add more you will have to add 3 as you cant add 1 on its own as it will picked on and adding 3 will stop this problem. if that make any sense lol.

Yep that makes sense. Showed my son some of the photos on here earlier, he likes guppies or platys together with the harlequin rasboras. If all goes according to plan, we'll get at least the guppies on Saturday, as the filter media should go in on Wednesday. At least they should be easy for us to find and not too expensive.

 

[starrynightxxi]

good luck! fair warning though, this is an addictive hobby.

 

[Lizzie71]

good luck! fair warning though, this is an addictive hobby.

I know! I don't even have any fish yet and I've spent practically the whole day researching

 

[theotheragentm]

That's nothing. Think about all the reading you'll be doing once you have your fish.

 

[Lizzie71]

That's nothing. Think about all the reading you'll be doing once you have your fish.

This has all gone wrong. The fish were meant to be for my son to look after on his own, but now it looks like I'm going to be the one who gets addicted

Oh well, once the tank is up and running hopefully he can do the feeding and possibly some of the weekly maintenance, supervised at first obviously.

 

[starrynightxxi]

uh oh!

better find places for all those OTHER tanks you'll be dragging in soon