Oh, no... What do I do now?

[pahansen]

Hi everyone. Last week I posted about whether I could keep male guppies together. (http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?showtopic=93226)

I brought home two male guppies, one with a fan-shaped orange tail and one with a longer, more veil-like yellow tail. Both were beautiful fish. I got them acclimated, watched to make sure that none of the other fish were too interested in them, and went to bed a few hours later. The next morning I awoke to find a perfectly happy orange fish and a yellow fish with almost no tail.
Needless to say, I felt horrible. After debating back and forth, I'd finally decided that the guppies would be relatively safe in my tank, and now one was struggling after only 12 hours in there. So much of the tail was gone, and the fish seemed to be struggling so much to swim, that I decided to euthanize him. I don't know that the chances of him growing enough tail back were good, and I couldn't see allowing him to struggle on needlessly. I felt so bad about the whole thing.

Now here we are, almost a week later, and the orange fish is still perfectly happy, swimming along in the tank with not so much as a single nip or tear. What's going on here, and where do I go from here?

Is it possible that the longer tail was just too irresistable to someone in the tank, while the fan-shaped tail doesn't attract much notice?

Could the orange guppy have attacked the yellow guppy, and thus there is nothing to fear on the part of the orange guppy?

Do lemon-flavored fish just taste better?

I honestly don't know what to do now. I have seen absolutely no aggression during this whole situation. It all happened either overnight or when I wasn't looking. (Sneaky fish!) I have no idea who the culprit is or, if it's not the orange guppy, why only one guppy was nipped.

I don't know whether it's better to just leave the orange guppy in the tank alone, or to try to get a second guppy with a tail similar to the orange guppy's tail. Which is the lesser of the two evils? I certainly don't want to lead another guppy to its death/shredding, but I hate for the orange fish to be the lone guppy in the tank as well.

Or should I just skip the whole thing and take the orange guppy back to the store? It seems a shame, because he's beautiful and in a week I have seen no one bothering him (which is why I suspect him of being the fin nipper), but I do want him to be happy.

Any advice?

-- Pamela

 

[WILDER]

Sorry for the loss of the fish, some guppys tails can go like that over night to finrot, once it has half gone they usually end up dying, what fish do you keep in the tank.

 

[Annastasia]

I'm going to bet the other male Guppy did this, as I have seen it happen in mine. I would be interested to know what other fish are in the tank, though.

You could try more male Guppies, but if the male is the one doing it, I doubt he's just going to stop. He'll probably pick on the other ones too. Perhaps just leaving him alone is the best. I've had single male Guppies before (Because I didn't want babies out of them) with other fish, and they were fine. Lived about 2 years, never had any trouble.

 

[ScoutCarcer]

I bought two orange tailed male guppies when I was 8 and I went to bed and the next morning the larger one was dead . Im never going to do that agian .

 

[pahansen]

Well, there are a bunch of potential culprits in the tank, I suppose.

2 Cherry Barbs
1 Gold Nugget Pleco (still a baby)
1 "Powder Blue" Dwarf Gourami
2 "Mottled Ivory" Montezuma Swordtails
1 Siamese Algae Eater (about 4")
1 Weather Loach (about 4")
1 African Butterfly Fish (still a baby)
A pile of small Ghost Shrimp

I think it's safe to rule out the shrimp. Also, I'd rule out the pleco, SAE, ABF, and loach. That leaves the barbs, gourami, and swordtails.

The swordtails are both male and were born and raised together. They come from a great local fish hatchery, whose advice I actually trust. (Otherwise I never would have gotten two male swordtails.) They actually swim in tandem, like they're schooling. I've never seen them pay attention to any of the other fish, except the SAE who was briefly "schooling" with them. (Then he got too big to feel like part of the club.) They pay absolutely no attention to the remaining guppy.

The gourami is male and has given me problems in the past, but only with another gourami.

The cherry barbs were the subject of the previous post I referenced. After doing some searching on TFF, it would seem that cherry barbs are not schooling fish and are generally not considered to be fin nippers. I have, in the past few days, noticed the remaining guppy swimming near and sometimes with the barbs. (They are currently about the same size.) None of the three of them seem to care about the others.

And then there's the remaining guppy. I'm also inclined to think, like Annastasia, that he was the real culprit, simply because nothing else has happened since that first night. I'm also inclined to just leave him as a solitary guppy. If he is the nipper, I see no reason to lure another unsuspecting guppy into his lair.

Thanks, Wilder, for the comment. The yellow fish had a little less than 1/4 of his tail left. I couldn't see him recovering, but in the past few days I'd been second guessing myself. I'm more confident now that I did the right thing.

-- Pamela

 

[Annastasia]

The only other ones out of that list that I could see doing this, are the Swordtails, or the Gourami. But I'm still betting on the other Guppy. Oops, just saw the Loach...I wouldn't rule him out, because some Loaches can be nippy. Still, I've never had a problem with Dojos and Guppies.

I think letting the remaining Guppy be solitary should be fine. He might even start playing with the other fish, a little.

 

[Angry_Platy]

I kept two male guppies for ages without incident for ages, till something else non-fish killed them

 

[mlee0332]

i've had 2 males and 2 females no problem.... Now I have 1 b/c the other died of columnaris, about 12 hrs after getting rid of gill flukes!!! I want to hit the people that said inbreeding guppies would be just fine! They ruined them....