Endlers Guppy male to female ratio

Endlers Guppy male to female ratio

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Hello everybody!

Here you can see a couple of my dwarf guppies.

It took me about 4 years to breed this strain.

And in 2020 I got Blue star Endlers.

Endlers and Guppies are relatives and they exhibit similar behavior.

Today I want to answer your question about Guppies and Endlers male to female ratio.

The Internet is a great source of information in general.

Though, your personal experience is much more reliable about everything - in my opinion.

I rely on my personal observations.

And I wish you would too.

Listen to what other people say, but trust your experience above all!

Endlers and Guppy are social fish - they like to be in groups.

And a group is more than 2 fish :)

How many males and females to put initially in your aquarium depends on your goals.

For breeding a strain with particular colors or different shaped fins you need one male and one female to start with.

Your choice of fish for selective breeding.

I selected this pair of smallest guppies I could find back in 2016 for breeding a strain of dwarfs.

With more than one partner fish would choose to breed with the strongest, largest, natural colors fish.

For selective breeding we need 1 male and 1 female only.

The ratio of males to females for a casual keeping and breeding of the same strain is not as important.

Without a female present in the aquarium, colorful Guppy and Endlers males do what males always do.

Males compete among themselves by showing off how beautiful they are.

Here you can see 3 Endlers males are figuring out who is the best among all while the female is taking time off in her hideout.

Without a female around males look kind of lost.

Male Guppy and Endlers have no purpose, no life without females.

Males follow a female tirelessly all day long.

Here you can see a male leaving the female to check on me and to see what's going on.

Males constantly scout surroundings and use bright colors to distract predators from the female.

She is the queen and males are her escort.

The female chooses the most energetic, most persistent and naturally colored males.

That is the reason for males to follow the female all day long.

And that is what males do by showing off in front of the female while brushing away all competitors.

In aquarium hobby Guppy and Endlers males behavior toward females often called aggressive and harassments.

Don't jump to conclusions yet!

Males rarely get in physical fights.

I want to point out the presence of another female in this tank.

Notice that all males follow the same one female.

Males see the other female too.

 And yet, males follow only the largest strongest female most of the time.

That is a very important observation you would notice in all aquariums with any male to female ratio.

It's the same behavior even in aquariums with many females and one male.

Also notice that males spend a good deal of their time "harassing" each other.

I personally prefer to call it teasing.

Most of the time males just show off without making any physical contacts.

Males that follow a female would try to touch her under belly fin.

Touching the female is a quite risky move for any male.

Adult Guppy and Endlers females are almost twice larger than males.

Females are stronger than males.

And females can swim faster than males.

She can lose all males at her whim.

That is the mating game Guppy and Endlers play all day long.

Males distracted by other females, competing males or anything else always come back to the strongest female.

Here you can see a male gets distracted by another female.

And shortly after, he goes back to follow the queen.

Here is a classic example of how males keep distance next to the queen.

Males stay behind and slightly to the side of the female to make themselves noticeable.

Males avoid standing directly in front of the female - for good reason.

All the males' "harassments" and "aggression" toward females is bleak compared with females fights.

Females fight for real - full body contact.

Fights between females happen on occasions when a new queen wants to establish her domination.

This fight gets interrupted by one of my Eastern newts. 

The newt came to check what this all is about - probably any food for newts to take care of :)

The fight between females is not over yet.

The females will keep fighting until one of them yields or gets damaged badly.

And do not underestimate the power of toothless Guppy Endlers females.

A female fighting for the crown is basically a charging unstoppable bull. 

Fighting females aiming to damage each other's fins.

Fish with damaged fins live very short lives.

This fight ended for now - the young female retreated.

The old queen stood her ground and an escort of males joined the queen.

There is only one Endlers Guppy queen among all females in any aquarium.

The queen picks males for mating.

As time goes by, the younger female gets more confident and skillful.

The new fight for the crown is imminent.

And there are many more females willing to challenge the aging queen.

The fights between two equivalently strong females may last for 5-10 minutes.

Females fight for domination only once in a while.

As you are watching this fight you may notice many other fish swim by watching the fight closely.

There will be a peace time once the two strongest females figure out who is the strongest.

And that is the answer to the question about the male to female ratio.

There is only one queen.

Always only one queen.

The queen chooses males to mate with.

All other females may have the second pick only if the queen allows it.

That is a harsh reality of Endlers Guppy society.

It is a female domination where the queen rules them all.

In this video I summarized hundreds of hours of videos made observing my fish through many years.

Fights between females happen noticeably more frequently when fish are kept in larger groups.

Less opponents prompts less fights.

The younger female seems to be scoring better this time.

That's it!

The old queen yielded.

The new queen rules!

Here the new queen with her escort.

Have fun and happy aquariums :)