Male Guppy Is A Bully?

[Lizzie71]

In my tank I have one male guppy and two adult female platys. I have noticed that the male guppy is always chasing the female platys, especially one of them. He doesn't seem to be aggressive I don't think, but it is obviously bothering them, they are always trying to get away and now they spend a lot of time hiding in plants and behind the heater.

Is this a common problem? Would he behave better if he had some guppy friends to play with? I want to add two more male guppies, but not if they are all going to chase my platys and upset them.

I don't want female guppies, I have no way of dealing with all the fry.

 

[Duck and Dive]

You should probably add some male or female guppies, but if you have females the male guppy will breed with them. You should have some more guppies insted of one.

 

[SSC]

Most of my male guppies are aggressive even towards fish twice as large as them.

 

[5teady_2012]

Get the male guppy, 2-3 females, this will calm him down and get him off his high horse

 

[Phatphish]

As above, you need to get a ratio of m to f of about 1 to 3, otherwise the females will be stressed out all day long running (or swimming ) away from the sex crazed little males......

 

[fourthtimelucky]

It's not aggression per se, the guppy just wants to make sweet love. With anything that'll stand still long enough.
If you introduce some more males that might distract him -- one of my male guppies really fancies my female balloon molly, but the rest of them are too busy showing off to each other to bother her.
Or you could add a few female guppies along with some sort of fry-eater.

 

[Lizzie71]

Hmmmm, this is trickier than I thought. I don't want to add females, I don't want fry - my tank is heavily planted and I'd probably get some survivors, even if I put in some bigger fish to eat them. My lfs is reluctant to take fry - I did manage to offload some platy fry, but I practically had to beg, and that was only for 5 of them!

If I add two more males as planned, they might still argue or harass each other or the female platys. But it might be better than it is now - my poor platys spend all day under rocks unless it's feeding time!

This is a new tank so I can't add anyone else for a couple of weeks, but I think increasing the guppy numbers will be my first priority.