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After the death of my male ram a few days ago, my 15 looks kind of empty. It currently has 6 Black Neon Tetras and 2 Ottos. I wanted something colourful, and was thinking about getting platies, but IME platies are too big and active for the tank, so i wanted to try guppies. What i wanted to know was would it be ok to keep all male guppies in the tank? And if so how many? (i was thinking 3 or 4) Or would they nip each others tails?
Thanks!
~BNF~

Not sure but was always told to keep a minimum of 2 females per male. If all males they become territorial and fight.

You can keep an only male guppy tank. If you do include females you should have at least 2 for every male since the males try to breed constantly and if there are too few females to go around they will be constantly bothered until they die of stress. With only males that problem doesn't exist. Occasionally they do try to breed with something else of similar size but usually it only annoys the other fish for a few minutes and they don't get that stressed out. You can keep any number of males together.

Guppies shouldn't be a problem at all. I kept an all-male guppy tank for quite some time. You may see some ragged tails amongst the males, but there really shouldn't be any problems and usually that settles down after a time. Let them wear off their excess energy and they'll calm down.

~Meow. Thus spoke the cat.~

Ok, thanks! I'll try all male guppies. I think i can get 4 in there, right? (according to the 2.5cm of fish per 75cm of surface area rule i can get 20cm of fish in there still, which is four guppies)
IME it's a nightmare with m/f livebearers, especially after my experiences with platies
~BNF~

You could get females too...then give them away or sell them.One of mine is pregnet now

Yup. I'm that crazy Twilight/animal/music girl

Noone takes guppies. Definitely not for money and sometimes you can't even give them away. The only stores that take them generally use them as food for their larger fish. Unless you have a very uncommon color of guppy you will quickly end up with a huge overstocking problem and lots of headaches if you don't keep the males and females seperate.

I was going to go with all males and then i went to the LFS today. They had 1 male i liked, but there was something wrong with his tail so i didn't get him. And then i found a beautiful yellow girl and i bought her. I'm going to get her some friends soon. I think if i ended up with males and females then the fry would all be dead soon. My tetras love to eat fry. All my cory fry were goine within a day when my corys were in there. And if i ended up with too many fry alive they could go in my mums tank. Now i don't know whether to go with all female or male and female (if i did i'd only get one male)

In all likelihood, you've got a pregnant girl right now (unless the LFS keeps the sexes seperately, which is usually out of the norm for stores) and you'll soon have both sexes anyway. No matter what you have in the tank currently, it's more than likely that at least some of the fry will survive. They can be hardy little buggers! Even having a trio of danios in my female guppy tank, I still had survivors and danios are probably a great deal more efficient at "population control" than are tetras.

It's really up to you, though. You can find some Really pretty males out there, and it's always interesting to see what the combination of coloring in the parents will become in the offspring. As has been said, though, you probably won't find anyone who will take them unless you're going to get some fancy breeding pair... then you might be able to sell them, but it's a buyer's market.

~Meow. Thus spoke the cat.~

Ok. I'll see if she gives birth. If not i'm buying more females, and i'll get a male if i see one that i can't resist. I wasn't planning on selling fry. Even if there is a few left, my tank can hold a few. So can the other tank. I have friends with really big tanks that always seem to have room for more fish (not fair )
Thanks #BNF#

Who ever said anything about selling them to stores?
I've got many a fishy friend in town that will take them.I want to go for maybe $.75 each,if more than 10 are bought or they buy other fry,each one is $.50 apiece.

Yup. I'm that crazy Twilight/animal/music girl

I think if I had a 100 friends willing to take them I wouldn't have given away even half the fry they produced. As is I only got 2 people to take some and for free.

You do realize that one female guppy can drop an estimate of 20-100 fry (maybe more) every month, right? Even if you remove the males, they can still drop fry every month for 6-9 months after exposure to a male. You're looking at a LOT of fish. Hope you have a LOT of friends looking for guppies!

I don't think the tetras will do much in the way of population control, either. Just my opinion, though... never tried the tetras with fry. Of course, the black neons in my tank were the only ones bold enough to try to eat an ant that I dropped into the tank... not even the betta girls wanted to take on that thing.

~Meow. Thus spoke the cat.~

Yeah i know about the # of fry.

if I think that to many are being dropped,i have a gourami[who is the MEANEST fish ever] and a few redeyes to take care of things

Yup. I'm that crazy Twilight/animal/music girl

The tetras were pretty effective with my cory fry. (They were all gone within about half an hour and about 200 hatched!)
Anyway, i don't know if i'm going to get a male yet. I'll stick to females if i can.

guess what?
My guppy dropped babies yesterday.I collected 7 so far.

Yup. I'm that crazy Twilight/animal/music girl

you should have a minimum of 3 three ottosand i'm not sure but i think that ottos can grow up to almost 3 inches long so you probably shouldn't put in any more fish

Ottos are only 2". (And an adorably cute two inches at that! )

~Meow. Thus spoke the cat.~

Yeah, ottos are two inches. Sad thing is, there was a big heat rise in my tank (stayed at 29 for 2 weeks for no apparant reason) anyway, it's gone down again now but one of the ottos died in the heatwave (and vanished) so i moved the larger one downstairs. So now theres a group of three downstairs. So now i have 6 tetras and the guppy. Any ideas? Thanks
Would it be a good idea to keep with three female guppies (no males i've decided) and bump up my tetra shoal?