Buying guppies one at a time...

LyzzaRyzz

So, I currently have nine guppies [3m,6f], a bn pleco, a rn pleco, and about 30 fry in my 45 gallon. The fry will be caught, and moved, and the few i cant catch, will grow, and eventually be caught. My nine adults now just swim in the net when i go baby hunting..its annoying!

Anyways, there is this wonderful male at my lps that i would love to get, though the females there are kind of blah, either silver, with white tails, or blondes, with red tails, and i already have two of those.
In my qt tank, there are 7 cherry barbs, waiting to finish out thier qt. There are four males and three females, because the first two days, two females died. I was considering grabbing four more cherries, one male and three females, and that male Guppy, and have them qt together.

Would this work?

And for future guppies, could i buy a single male or female and qt them without them getting stressed? i keep my m/f ratio so theres a few more females than males. I just dont want to have to buy one nice male and two females that i dont really want.

Varkolak

I would think a male Guppy would be fine alone for 2 weeks so you shouldn't worry too much about him

nawilson89

I dont really know about qt four Cherry Barb and Guppy together. in my experience barbs get nippy and only 4 together would further the stress to make them more nippy. 4 alone would be fine but with pretty fish like Guppy you dont want to take the chance of having your beautiful male getting his fins torn up.

Bacon Is Good

Are you gonna sell the fry? Goodluck with the guppies, get rid of the barbs.

LyzzaRyzz

Why would I get rid of the barbs? I've gotten advice that though the barbs may be nippy, none of my gups are fancy, so it should be okay. And that another concern is that they are too active, though my gups are pretty damn active, so I think they should mesh well.
And as far as I know, they won't eat the fry, but even if they do, I remove enough fry in a seperate tank that it won't matter.
I will be finding out what to do with the fry, though Im pretty sure my LPS will take em..

Bacon Is Good

The barbs will eat the fry it has happend to me. When I was just starting out in the hobby a Petco guy said barbs ill not eat guppies or their fry. The guppies didn`t even have fry.

Varkolak

I've had cherry barbs before and they are much less aggressive then tiger barbs, so much so that there has been a long fin Cherry Barb developed so I don't see issues from my own experience

LyzzaRyzz

Well, my fry go to the top of the tank, and barbs are lower tank fish, and i have alot of floating plants, and hiding places. I guess itll be a touch and go operation! I should be putting the barbs in the tank this week, and well see if any babies go missing! Its not as if theyll never have fry again, and i cant remove the barbs..

And, i remove fry every day to my fry tank, i have about thirty in there! Its only a 2.5, though once i get this second batch of cherries, ill be using my qt tank as a 30 day+ fry tank, til thier colors develop, and i can decide what to do with them.