Swordtail Being Harassed By Male Guppies.

[saffholly]

Hi, a few weeks ago i bought some mollies and a swordtail (one of those silly moments where you buy without thinking as your 8 year old is nagging for a swordtail), the swordtail is a female and i suspect she maybe pregnant. I put her into my big tank (140ltr) which has 6 male guppies, 4 mollies (1 male, 2 female and one baby) and a bristle nose plec. The mollies are fine with the swordtail but 2 of the males keep chasing her around (i think trying to mate with her).

So are they wanting to mate with her or is she maybe close to giving birth and they want to eat her fry?

I could try moving her but i only have a 50ltr tank to move her too (where i have 5 pregnant female guppies and 1 male guppy) which is probably too small for her?

Do i wate and see if she gives birth soon (which may solve the problem), move her to the smaller tank with the females? or re-home her?

 

[snazy]

Yeah, they are trying to mate with her. She'll get stressed. The guppies need their own guppy females, at least 2 per male. Then they may leave her alone.

 

[saffholly]

What should i do? i cant have enough females in my tank to keep the males busy (as theres not enough room), i keep my males and females seperate (and breed when i want to with selected males). I could swap the males and females (so the males are in the smaller tank) and put the females in the big tank with the sword tail and the molly's, coould keep 2 males in there too so would have 5 or 6 males in the 50ltr (do you think that would be ok?). I'm trying to get another tank but husband is not happy as i already have 3 tanks (i have a small tank with fry in it) and am running out of room

 

[snazy]

5-6 males in a 50 litre should be ok. All I know is that you can't keep swordtail males together easily as they are aggressive towards each other, but guppy/platy males have no problem living together. My male guppies have formed a pack and follow each other. The females feel better without males to harass them too. No one wants to be raped all day long

 

[Nenana]

Hello,
My 2 guppy boys are chasing my female sward tail constantly too, they seem to be attached to her it is kind of funny. She does not seem to care at all may be because she is much larger than they are. I also have a male sward tail with her and he sometimes chases her around. She seems to be running away only from him. I think she is pregnant because he was chasing her a lot a week ago and now she looks even bigger. I think it really depends on how many fish are in your tank and how big your female is as well as how insisting are your guppies. I have had my female together with the 2 males for over a month now and the new male I got couple of weeks back and everything seems normal. All of them are in a 10 gallon tank as well, but they seem to be fine. The water quality stays nice and I add some salt to the water. If that matters at all. I also turn off the light night time so fish can rest. If you are worried though I would swap them around. I had to do that with these 2 guppies because at first I had 6 females with the 3 males (that was in a separate fish tank) and 2 of them were so insisting on mating the females that they would chase the same female constantly and they killed 5 like that. They were also eating their fins. I got very upset and moved them into a tank where there is no females and left only one male with 6 females in the guppy tank and they are doing great. I will update you if my sward tail looks stressed out at some point but for now she seems like she does not even notice them.
Have a good day

 

[saffholly]

I had to re-home her. I have 6 male guppies but it was only 2 of them that were picking on her, she looked so fed up with them so she has now gone to a new home, to a friend who has bought her a boyfriend and she's now in a tank without guppies.

 

[Nenana]

I had to re-home her. I have 6 male guppies but it was only 2 of them that were picking on her, she looked so fed up with them so she has now gone to a new home, to a friend who has bought her a boyfriend and she's now in a tank without guppies.

That is a great news on one side. Male guppy are so insisting. The 2 I have killed 5 female fish before we moved them at first the pet store was telling us the fish tank is not big enough so they are stressed out but since we moved them no fish has died in there and we have the same amount of fish in there. Have a good day