Guppies are no doubt beautiful fish.
What attracted me to guppies is that I love the appearance of Bettas, but I don’t like how they are territorial and can be aggressive. So, I learned that guppies have similar appearances, that you can find guppies with fan tails, lyre tails, delta tails, spear tails, double sword tails, round tails, veil tails and they come in a variety of colors.
I am newbie guppy breeder and I’ve owned a variety of guppies and currently experimenting with various guppy for breeding and have thriving fry’s, thriving female guppies… and as for the male guppies -> insert sad emoji.
Guppies (Poecilia Reticulata) are also known as millionfish and rainbow fish and is one of the world’s most popular freshwater aquarium species and are live bearers.
Part of the popularity of guppies is they highly adapt, thrive in different environmental and ecological conditions. While known as freshwater fish, they are also one of the few fish that can live in saltwater (150% of seawater salinity). Guppies’ natural habitat is brackish water, partly fresh water and partly salt water.
As many who have heard about guppies know, guppies are know for breeding. They always say “Just add water” for male and female guppies because they can breed easily.
I have watched guppies try to get the attention of the female guppies and next thing you know, you find the guppies pregnant.
While I do have male guppies, I am running into an issue where a few male guppies are not exactly living long. The fry’s and the female guppies are doing just fine. The male guppies, not so much.
I tested my water daily, I tested them in different tanks and then I started to observe.
Male guppies are known for having high mortality rates according to a study by Macquarie University.
Part of it is due to unwanted male attention as male guppies are attempting to mate as many times as possible due to the low energy cost of sperm production.
According to the journal “Ethology”, males spent more than 45% of their day chasing females and their mortality rate was more than three times higher when housed with females compared to being housed with males.
According to the study, female guppies tend to be “choosy” and want to mate less often owing to the high cost of egg production.
Introducing Casper, a platinum snow white male guppy.
I wanted to see how Casper would do with the female guppies and he has been non-stop in harassing the females that are not paying him no mind.
The females are not wanting much to do with him. Casper is the runt of the male Guppies and at first, I thought, he’s trying to hard with the other males not in the tank and him being with the females.
But instead, Casper has been going non stop trying to harass the female guppies.
In a new study, male guppies who fail to win over females that they try to use tiny claws on the tips of their genitalia to secure mates.
According to biologists from the University of Toronto who conducted an experiment, they found that the grippers helped males seal the deal with females that were otherwise unwilling to mate.
If females don’t show an interest, males continue to pursue them. They sneak around the female from behind or below, and try to force sperm into her without her cooperation. This behavior is common among guppies.
Casper is running ragged trying to find a mate and they are not wanting him. Two previous guppies (fancier ones), have since died and each with the female guppies were similarly dissed.
But the females who have been harassed then take their misplace aggression out on other female guppies.
It’s no doubt a work in progress and observing guppies is rather interesting. But I’m starting to learn more about these little fish, but while they are looked at as beautiful fish that just try to have sex all day, they are much more.
So, we’ll see how things go with these fish.
UPDATE: The females wanted nothing to do with Casper and Casper kept at it and then the fish started social distancing it and he eventually died.
