Guppy Problem!

[fishing for info]

Hey,
okay, so my dad asked me to post his situation and ask for any advice or information etc.
He wanted some guppies for his tropical tank, the shop assistant advised to get twice as many females to males. is that necessary? It's quite a shame seeing as my dad was mostly looking for colourful males but he ended up buying 12 females and 6 males as advised. Unfortunately 3 of his females have died and he's only had them for a short while. he was wondering if he needs to get 3 more females to make the ratio 2:1 again or whether the assistant told him to get twice as many females because they were more likely to die.
Quite a confusing story there but hope maybe someone get's the gist and can help us out
Thanks, Regards,
Robyn

 

[fishnovice]

The lfs is right - you need more female guppies than males. Otherwise the sex mad males will hassle the females to death especially when they are pregnant. Both sexes are equally hardy and have the same survival rates.All my guppies survived and I haven't had any problems. However, I got them from 2 private breeders and I heard many commercially produced guppies in shops are weakened by inbreeding. I would watch the guppies and if the males are hassling them, get some more replacement females.

 

[spectrum]

It is true that you need more females than males. However you don't actually even need females, you could easily just have males Never listen to exactly what the LFS says, they're never always right.
Also its not a good idea to get females at all unless you want your tank overrun with fry.

 

[hihi100202]

yah when i had guppies i had just a bunch of males.