I came up with a conclusion

Status
Not open for further replies.

wwestar2000

Fish Addict
Joined
Jun 2, 2005
Messages
810
Reaction score
0
Location
A pedestrain paradise where the catwalk got it's c
:D I dont care what people say. It happens in my tank so i have all the proff i need for myself. One day all my 3 boys are attracted to one female. I have 2 full grown females. There really big. I have an othere female but shes the size of to of the males who are young but she isnt to sexaully active. So one day i would see all three males persueing one female. while the other is calmly swimming on the other side of the tank relaxing. well yeah just wanna say that. I know im not following the male or female ration thing but my fish seem extremmely happy the way they are. Plus i have three female ballon maollies in there that the guppies sumetime take a chance at.lol :p
 
They may be pursuing one female because the other one is pregnant already? Or they could be following her to stress her out, and make her have her fry so they can eat them. There are a LOT of different reasons why they may be following one female and not the other, and I don't think it's because they go in heat. Pregnant fish secrete hormones, and male Guppies know that, so they may be following her because of that. Also, technically, once they are pregnant, they CAN'T go into heat, I don't think. And since Guppies are almost always pregnant...well...

Though I do not believe it is possible for them to go into heat.
 
Annastasia said:
Pregnant fish secrete hormones, and male Guppies know that, so they may be following her because of that.
Yeah thats kinda what im talking about like one is doing something to attract themselves more than the other. I doubt its after the fry cause my ballon mollies are constantly having fry and no one eats them. The fry get so comfortable they dont even hide. I know there not trying to get fry also cause they go next to the female and move there little impregnating apendage. U know what i mean if u have guppies. lol :D
 
Yeah, I'm betting it's the pregnancy hormones. They don't try to attract Males...it just happens. They are drawn to it.

They may be trying to get fry though. Mollies have MUCH bigger fry, and perhaps the Guppies can't even eat them. I wouldn't put it past the males to try to get a snack.

Also, how many males and females do you have?
 
um my ballon mollies are actaully smaller than my female guppies. And there fry were like ants when they were first born. So i dont think thats it. I have 3 female guppies 3 male guppies and 3 female ballon mollies. I make sure no one gets overly harrassed in my tank. So dont wory they all love each other. :D
 
You really should have more females...while it may LOOK like they are not getting harrassed, you have no idea what goes on at night which is when they are usually the worse. You females may be getting very stressed out. This can shorten their life-span, and make them more prone to disease. It's best to have more females then males.
 
See the thing is that its like i have 6 females to 3 males. Cause the males are also attracted to my ballon mollies. They show as much attraction as they do with the gups. It has been like that for about a year now and only one female died. She died recently. It wasnt cause of the males though cause she was sisters with the younges one i have now. And the males never pay attention to them. They were not breeding age. The sister still isnt breeding age i guess cause her brothers or the full grown male dont persue her. And ive never had any fish sick in the tank either. The little girl who died was also a little disabled. She had one of those bendy back bones so she wasn't the best swimmer.
 
wwestar, you really ought to listen to what people have to say on here instead of just making stuff up as you go along. there are a large number of really knowledgeable people like Annastasia who have years of experience and have put in countless hours of research into how livebearers work and the best ways to keep them. the fastest way to obtain this sort of expertise for yourself is to listen to their input; they've already made the mistakes and found the answers, all you have to do at this point is read a few sentences in a forum. remember, we all learn something new everyday--why not learn something useful while we're at it? :thumbs:
 
pica_nuttalli said:
wwestar, you really ought to listen to what people have to say on here instead of just making stuff up as you go along. there are a large number of really knowledgeable people like Annastasia who have years of experience and have put in countless hours of research into how livebearers work and the best ways to keep them. the fastest way to obtain this sort of expertise for yourself is to listen to their input; they've already made the mistakes and found the answers, all you have to do at this point is read a few sentences in a forum. remember, we all learn something new everyday--why not learn something useful while we're at it? :thumbs:
What is your problem. My tank is fine how it is. I didn't do this post to ask questions i did it because i wanted to share with people my fishes behavior. I never added anything as the posts went along. If you read the first post its all t5here. Dont try to act like i am a complete noviced. I had animals all my life. These fish have lived in the tank for about a year fine. Im not gonna go out and buy more females cause you tell me to. You are not the one here in front of my tank able to observe how my fish are treating each other. I would not let my fish live in discomfort. Back off! :grr:
 
Male guppys have very high sex drives as they need to breed alot in the wild to survive as they are the prime food source for many predatory fish. Naturally though there will be hundreds of females in a single lake and there are enough abundent males for them to hang around in bachelor groups without fighting, but when people limit these sociable fish to very small groups in comparison to what they are used to it raises social tention because they guppys instinctivily asociate their small numbers as to somthing that is threatening their species and start to breed even more rapidly.
This is why it is so important to get gender ratios in the right balance, even if say you had 3males and 9females this is not always enough even though it goes by the guidline rules of guppy stocking, you have to take every guppys personality and needs into consideration.
The points of having so many females to the males is;
a. To help prevent agression between the males, when there is a serious lack of females the males will fight to the death and even in a better situation, they will stress each other out no end.
b. So no individual female gets harrassed to much by a male/s, over harrassment can lead to abortion of fry, bring on sickness, end up having birthing complications i.e mother fish dies during giving birth from stress from males- even at best your females simply won't be enjoying their experience with so many males, it simply isn't natural for them.
A freind of mine once had 5males and 2females despite my advice, when one of the young females tried to give birth, the males ate her tail off and she died shortly after giving birth- the had never been agressive to her before, but it shows that doesn't mean it will stop the inevitable from happening...

It sounds like your young females are already getting more attention than they deserve, your male guppys are sex starved with so few females between them so any that come into "heat" will be constantly raped, and it sounds like your males aern't just directing their attention towards the mature females.

You cannot say your fish are happy, simply because fish don't share the same emotions as we do and we have no way of realy telling you they feel, im not saying you are a bad fish keeper or would purposely be less than responsable over your fish, but i hear too often of scenarios where like a person keeps a comet goldfish in a 5gal tank and refuses to get a larger tank for it because "the fish looks happy in its current tank".
The only way you be positivly sure that you fish are doing well is by following done and learned tactics and info like as far as good stocking is concerned and studying the fish's behavior, and that doesn't nesarsarily mean the fish are happy just because the males are constantly mating with a particular female/s.

My advice;
Depending on wether your tank has the space for more, get some more females, if not rehome one of the males at least.
ps: guppys males will mate with practically anything that swims and doesn't eat them, they will even mate with each other, but this is not a case of love or gayness but more a case of dominance over the socialy weaker fish. Many animals in the world practice this.
 
Wwestar, it actually might be a good idea to get some more females. Your female is going to be uber stressed with all the males going after her. She could easily get diseased from the stress or die giving birth from the constant demand. More females would take the demand off of her. Once again, this is not meaning to offend you, but it is a well known fact about female livebearers that you need 2 or 3 females per one male.
 
kids these days... :rolleyes: you have absolutely no respect wwestar, and obviously can't even listen to someone with a different view than you without getting defensive...you need to back off everyone else - they are sharing their experiences just as you have tried to do - so why aren't they allowed to, when you can share your conjectures with the rest of us (look up conjecture and you will know what i'm trying to say) :kana:
 
Maybe you've just been lucky. I can speak from experience...I thought mine were happy too. I got up in the middle of the night one night, and saw my male guppy chasing my female Guppy, and picking on her very aggressively. Don't let this happen to your fish. Please get a few more females.

And yes, they will try to mate with the Mollies. But they really need female Guppies too. It's just nature. Male Guppies have high sex drives, and you don't know if your females are getting stressed. They may not get sick, or die...but they may not be happy either.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Most reactions

Back
Top