Agressive Male Platy

[charley]

Hi Guys

Am quite new to all of this still but would be really grateful for some help with this! This might get a little complicated but I'll do my best!

Ok, I started off with 2 males and 4 female platties. One male became very aggressive and was picking on the females (he would try to nip their fins etc) and as a consequence, I took him back to the fish shop. During this time, one of the girls became pregnant and she has since had fry (1 survived - Hurrah!). Anyway the tank was once again peaceful until a couple of days ago when the remaining male became agressive towards the females. Now is this normal platy behaviour or is there something wrong? I've had these guys now for approx 3 months.

Many thanks in advance for your help and sorry for the long post!

 

[Angry_Platy]

It depends how aggressive he is being. I always find for aggro male platies that time out does wonders (I use a breeding box for about 3-4 days)....if this doesn't work, try takig all fish out, rearranging the tank and putting them all back....him last. This way the other fish have a chance to establish territories without the aggressor there....

HTH

 

[charley]

thank you so much for your quick response!

Not sure I can do the first idea, as I don't have a separate tank, but the second one sounds good. What are the logistics or this plan of action!! Do I just literally just take them out, re-arrange and put them back in within an hour or should this take hours or days? hope this makes sense!!

Thanks

 

[sandywatt]

Rearranging the tank is good advice, how well it works will be for you to decide. Maybe a good idea would be to have the tank set up in such a way that the female can escape this attention e.g more plants etc
Any other members have opinions on the correct male to female ratio for this tank?

Include tank dementions?

 

[Def]

The more females per male, the better. Don't go with less than 3, or your females will get very stressed.

What you're noticing is quite usual - it takes a while for male platys to settle down and figure out they're safe and can be the boss. When they do, that's when the aggression starts.

Sorry to say this, but if the female the male was harassing became pregnant and gave birth, how sure are you that he was being aggressive? Male platys act wierd when trying to mate - platy love sure is strange. The best way I can describe it is the male looks like he's attacking the female with his gonopodium. That's normal mating, not aggression.

I posted an answer to a similar thread in this forum yesterday about aggression types, have a look and see if it helps.

 

[yhbae]

I know this will not sound encouraging to you, but I had one ich incidence since I started this hobby and it was related to a male platy stressing the heck out of a particular female who got caught by ich... The whole tank got infected after that...

The only thing that can be suggested, is to add more hiding places, and if you can, increase the number of females. In the worst case, you may want to bring back the male and try another male. I have plenty of males, and it appears that not all of them are created equal...