Guppy Murderer

[Reamer]

So I've had a male guppy in a new 10 gal as it cycling,
as it came to the end of it cycle I added 4 female guppies
the male guppy was super excited to see 4 ladies come to the neighborhood, at first
he was seemingly turned down by all 4...
He quickly became more aggressive,
2 day from when the females where added, I wake up to see one of the females dead in a small patch of micro sword.
at first i thought it was New tank syndrome,
but once i looked at her body i Saw one of her fins was missing and a wounded area just behind her left gill (between the gill and missing fin).

I have moved the male to my medical/isolation tank I already had up and running.

My question is, is there any way to calm my male guppy down? Or is he destined to a life of isolation?

 

[crabbylion]

You got yourself a mad man on hand.

 

[Amerce]

This happens when males don't get what they want, happens all the time

 

[Paradise3]

This happens when males don't get what they want, happens all the time

I know what you mean.

Never happend to me. Must be all my lovely coloured males that dazzle the females.

Xxx~misscosmo~xxX

 

[Reamer]

im glad you think my dead fish is funny....

but anyway i guess the sum of this is my guppy is too aggressive to be in the same tank as other fish

thank you

 

[OldMan47]

Welcome to the forum Reamer.

The dead fish is not funny, nor is it funny to blame a male that you have not seen attack the female. It may well have been a case of poor water chemistry, new tank syndrome. If it is, you will have more losses, whether or not you have moved the male out. Any fish will pick at a dead fish that is left in a tank, as you found your male doing. What do your ammonia and nitrite tests show for your tank water now?

 

[Reamer]

Welcome to the forum Reamer.

The dead fish is not funny, nor is it funny to blame a male that you have not seen attack the female. It may well have been a case of poor water chemistry, new tank syndrome. If it is, you will have more losses, whether or not you have moved the male out. Any fish will pick at a dead fish that is left in a tank, as you found your male doing. What do your ammonia and nitrite tests show for your tank water now?

thank you for the welcome,

I have seen the Male do aggressive things(as i said in the OP) to the fem inc nips, i am sry this was not 100% clear

and i never saw anything nip at my dead fish, ATM I'm over feeding my fish to help the cycling, so they could care less for the dead fish in the bushes.

my ammonia and nitrite are both at/near 0 as of my test today (water is a little heavy), although as i said this is a new cycling tank may not of been the case 2 days ago when the fish where added.

at first i did believe it to be new tank syndrome (as i said in the OP), but when I looked at the body, there was a bit off fin and wound near it.(as i said in the OP)


if you know of anyway to make a guppy less aggressive i would love to know,


nothing i would like better then to get my guppy out of the 2 gal medical/isolation tank and put it back with the fem in the larger one
But he is overly aggressive and the dead fish was a line the told yes i do need to take him out,
I didnt just wake up see a dead guppy and blam the male just cuz he was a male

 

[5teady_2012]

Welcome to the forum Reamer.

The dead fish is not funny, nor is it funny to blame a male that you have not seen attack the female. It may well have been a case of poor water chemistry, new tank syndrome. If it is, you will have more losses, whether or not you have moved the male out. Any fish will pick at a dead fish that is left in a tank, as you found your male doing. What do your ammonia and nitrite tests show for your tank water now?

Completely agree with oldman here, its not funny at all.
I also think it could be due to the water quality and probably when its died the others have pecked at it.

Also you must remove any dead fish straight away cos it will raise the nitrite levels.

Putting guppies in a tank that is not already cycled is not a good idea my friend, guppies are not very hardy fish and struggle to survive in a tank with poor quality (if this is the case with your ammonia and nitrite leves.)

Do a big water change asap (70-80%), so the levels are at 0 (very important to be at 0)

Personally i would do a waterchange for the next week everday (25%) just to keep the levels at 0 while the cycle completes..

Feeding the fish more - more waste = more ammonia = more nitrite etc.....

PLus rotting food will cause higher levels, with all this taken in to account, you may be getting spikes on your levels.

Stay on top for now with your water changes and keep an eye on your levels.

 

[NinjaSmurf]

Are you sure that she wasn't already like this from the shop? I've gotten a fish, thought I looked it over good at the store, only to get it home and discover a chunk out of it's tail. Sometimes this is caused by the other fish in the bag. I wouldn't blame the male just yet, I've had some very mean females that wouldn't hesitate to pick on another girl, or even a male that was too bothersome.

 

[Reamer]

good tip Livebearer_Master and it was the first thing i did when i got up this morning, to see a dead fish in my tank, and the levels where at/near 0 as i have said,

i have used guppies to cycle tanks from when i was little, and yes over feeding the fish make the nitrites go up but when the nitrites are high is when nitrate-forming bacteria will start to grow, and this is what your looking to do when you set up a new tank

1 over-feed guppies in a 10 gal tank as been very effective for me in setting up small tanks, for my self and others, but this is besides the point..


if its NTS then i have it covered, but both the test and they way i found the body, doesn't seem to point to that, yes it could be postmortem bites but the body wasn't floating it was in a patch of micro sword at the bottom of the tank...

and think NTS would effect the 1 of the 4 new females and not touch the 1 male who been living in the take for 30days now?

pls if you think it NTS you might be right but i dont think so, if you know of any way to calm down a male guppy i would be very happy to hear it,

@ NinjaSmurf

I don't believe so but i am not 100% I do look at all my fish before i paid for them but i may of missed it seemed to swim fine for the first 2 days I had her, and thank for being seeming the only person on this forum who isn't insensitive or treats new people like idiots.

 

[VaegaVic]

With a tank cycled for 1 guppy, and then you add 4 females, you are effectively quadrupling the load on the bacteria. I always advise adding no more than 50% of the current load to a tank at once E.g. If you have 4 fish, no more than 2 should be added next time.

I'm putting the death down to a sudden spike in ammonia and nitrite due to 4 guppies being added at once, this created enough waste for 5 guppies when there was only enough bacteria for 1.

We need to know water stats, although by now it could be too late to get an accurate reading, so we may never know.

As for reason why it only effected one female, she could have been the weakest. Couple this with the stress of moving and then a spike in water stats and you'll have one dead guppy. In terms of marks on her, that could just be natural decay added with the other's giving her a nibble overnight, or it could have easily been an old injury that showed up as soon as natural decay started.

Hopefully this will give you a few ideas, but I honestly very much doubt that the male is really that aggressive, add him back in and watch for any aggression of course, but he has 3 ladies to choose from, so any aggression should be rather nicely spread out.

 

[OldMan47]

You are suffering from a misconception there Reamer. The nitrate processing bacteria will develop just as fast with almost no detectable nitrites as they will with lots of nitrites. The only real difference will be that the nitrites are harming the fish. I have had slightly immature filters cause me nitrite issues in a newly cloned filter and have done daily water changes for as little as 4 days while waiting for my almost mature filter to finish cycling. It didn't hurt things a bit. Overfeeding to intentionally pollute the tank water in hopes of speeding a cycle is a misunderstanding of how things work. Any surplus of ammonia , even one you can't measure, will promote growth of ammonia processing bacteria to a level; where the bacteria can barely get enough to eat of it. Similarly with any trace, even one you can't measure, of nitrites in the water. Each bacterial colony will continue to grow until it just can't find enough of the chemical that it depends on. It is the reason that a cycle takes about the same time in a fish-in situation where we carefully control ammonia and nitrites at very low levels as a fishless cycle where we intentionally control the ammonia levels quite high. In both cases the bacteria grow s fast as they can toward the levels of chemicals they find in the water. The fishless case simulates having a huge fish stocking and establishes a large bacterial colony as a result. A fish-in cycle sets up a real biological load and also cycles to match that load. To grow a larger bacterial colony once the filter is cycled means slow additions of fish, not adding 4 fish to a tank that only has one in it. Doing that will almost always give you a minicycle in a fully mature tank, much less a newly cycled one.

 

[Paradise3]

I didn't think it was funny but i understood what amerce meant. I wasn't laughing at a dead fish, i would never laugh at a dead fish as i have had alot in the time i have kept fish. I had 23 all at once 1 time. So please don't think i thought your dead fish was funny because i didn't. Like people have pointed out fish-in cycling is not a good idea with guppies and adding 4 at 1 time is to many and will cause spikes in ammonia and nitrite causing dead fish, also fish don't know when to stop eating so they might have pecked at her after she died. Please don't blame the male guppy as he could be completely innocent.

Xxx~misscosmo~xxX

 

[Reamer]

@ VaegaVic

there is no way you can add just 1/2 a fish, and with guppies you want to have a 3/1 m/f count so i would have to add a min of 3, this is not my first tank nor my first guppy tank this is my first overly aggressive guppy,

i have the reading of the morning she was found dead they where both at/near 0, ph was @7 water was slightly hard alkalinity was low.

and i'm not going to add him back to find a second dead guppy, even if it was NTS or stress, why should i risk the life of my tank with out trying to find way to calm him down, cuz as i have said he is overly aggressive even if i haven't seen him kill.

@ OldMan47
you seem to no very little of biology or zoology so i see no point in debating this with you,
and pls lets not take this Off topic here your a Moderators and all.

@ misscosmo
i forgive you maybe the fact i was upset i just lost a fish made me judge it a little to hard


@ everyone

my water test show no huge spike from the day before i added them and the morning i found her dead,

she may of died from NTS showing 0 sighs for 2 days up in to when i went to bed, but in my mind the over aggressive male, I was worded was a little too "overly aggressive" before i went to bed, bit her fin and side she slowly fell to the bottom of the tank, struggled to hide in a small patch of micro sword fighting for life, then died there.

and if anyone thinks saying "I think it was NTS" over and over is going to get me to put him back in there with the other 3 your crazy.

even if he didn't kill her he is still overly aggressive, and my question is still is there any way to make a guppy less aggressive?

 

[5teady_2012]

@ VaegaVic

there is no way you can add just 1/2 a fish, and with guppies you want to have a 3/1 m/f count so i would have to add a min of 3, this is not my first tank nor my first guppy tank this is my first overly aggressive guppy,

i have the reading of the morning she was found dead they where both at/near 0, ph was @7 water was slightly hard alkalinity was low.

and i'm not going to add him back to find a second dead guppy, even if it was NTS or stress, why should i risk the life of my tank with out trying to find way to calm him down, cuz as i have said he is overly aggressive even if i haven't seen him kill.

@ OldMan47
you seem to no very little of biology or zoology so i see no point in debating this with you,
and pls lets not take this Off topic here your a Moderators and all.

@ misscosmo
i forgive you maybe the fact i was upset i just lost a fish made me judge it a little to hard


@ everyone

my water test show no huge spike from the day before i added them and the morning i found her dead,

she may of died from NTS showing 0 sighs for 2 days up in to when i went to bed, but in my mind the over aggressive male, I was worded was a little too "overly aggressive" before i went to bed, bit her fin and side she slowly fell to the bottom of the tank, struggled to hide in a small patch of micro sword fighting for life, then died there.

and if anyone thinks saying "I think it was NTS" over and over is going to get me to put him back in there with the other 3 your crazy.

even if he didn't kill her he is still overly aggressive, and my question is still is there any way to make a guppy less aggressive?

If you are very confident your water stats are good, then i see you have no option to get rid of the male guppy mate.

Are you using a liquid test or strips?