Happy Halloween and Lapras' puzzles

Switch to Eevee. Vaporeon is one of the best Pokemon in the game

Lapras are not just rare there, it's rare everywhere. Keep Lapras as buddy. Dratini candy is easier to come by in wild.

Keep Lapras 1 as buddy and power up the second one as a defender

I would use the atlas and strive to get better pokemon with higher cp. I know you want to play the gym game but stardust is way to valuable. I would still go hard and strive to get both candy. Once you start fighting pokemon over 2500cp you must be concerned with timing out as well. I would strive to have a dratini over 600 cp, for lapras or snorlax I would like to start at 1800 before dumping stardust. Wait for IV's over 90% before dumping stardust.

Lapras and Snorlax are so much better than any other pokemon at defending and so much harder to get candies for. Thus, just keep getting Lapras candies. You can find a water biome (if you haven't already) and get enough Dratini candy from farming that.

Waiting for 90%+ iv Lapras with 1800CP+ ? That could takes years honestly .. don't do that. You could hedge your bets and get a bunch of the Lapras candy before powering up your current Lapras, so if you find a better one you can power that up instead.

Very simple man, keep the lapras for buddy AND go farm dratini candy in the wild. If you find dratini you'll get 8 candy per capture (with transfer) and since dratini is much less rare to find i believe this is the best.

The second Lapras is how much above 50%? if 70%+ i would power him up..if less i wouldnt.
Try to farm dratini in the wild at least for now while you farm more candies to up your Lapras. When you got many Lapras candies switch buddy for Dratini and rush as hard as you can for 1~2 days.