Not Enough Lyretails?

[dburns865]

Hello all, I am fairly new to keeping fish and had a quick question. I have a 5 gallon I keep my balloon molly and a couple ghost shrimp in and recently added two lyretail guppies. The pet stores around my town say lyretails are community fish whereas fancy guppies are schooling. I saw about 7 lyretails in a tank with about 30 semi-aggressive fish that had eaten off the majority of the guppies tails. I just had to save some so I put two in my 5 gallon. Now that I am home I am reading that lyretails are, in fact, schooling. Should I bring them back, leave them, or add more and potentially overcrowd my tank?

 

[OldMan47]

Welcome to our forum dburns865.
Guppies in general are easy care non-schooling fish. Any number from 1 to 100 is a good number, but you must observe the limits your tank imposes. In the case of your tiny tank, I would not add any more fish at all. A balloon molly, a couple of ghost shrimp and 2 guppies is a full load, even maybe a bit more than a full load, for such a small tank. You will need to do daily 50% or larger water changes for at least the next 6 weeks unless you have the necessary testing equipment to do a fish-in cycle. Fish-in cycling is done as you can find in the link in my signature area. With the proper tests, you might get away with slightly smaller water changes and maybe even every other day water changes.

 

[dburns865]

Oh my tank is cycled already. It was set up a month ago and tested before the molly was put in. Thank you for the advice! I am glad they will be okay, I'd hate to put them back in that tank. They are all eaten up!