Dead Swollen Gourami

[Daveptkd]

Hi all,

For the last 3 days one of my female dwarf gouramis has got quite swollen, almost like she was laden with eggs, last night she stopped eating and today she died

Her scales were perfect, and no marks on her at all. Only thing was the size of her!! any ideas what this could have been??

She was in a 33gal tank, with other dwarfs (1f, 1m), swordtails, danios, bristlnose plec and 2 rams.

many thanks

Dave

 

[nmonks]

Unfortunately, sounds like yet another victim of Standard Issue Dwarf Gourami Disease.

Virtually all commercially bred stock is infected, and the only reason they are alive on the fish farms is that they are tanked up with antibiotics. Once they are shipped, they infection gradually gets worse, and it can prove fatal for a variety of reasons. Improper water chemistry, for example (they need warm, soft, acid, and nitrate-free water to do well). The symptoms are pretty well standard: bloating, lack of movement, poor colours, heavy breathing, and finally open sores and white patches of dead skin.

Ram cichlids and neon tetras suffer from much the same problem. Because we want cheap fish, and because people keep buying them, the massive mortality rates common to these fishes doesn't seem to faze the fish breeders and retailers at all. In my opinion, this is very saddening.

From casual conversations with retailers and fishkeepers, I would say the mortality rate for dwarf gouramis, within the first year of being exported, is worse than 50%.

Personally, I wouldn't ever waste my money on dwarf gouramis except from a local breeder. I certainly wouldn't recommend you go out and buy some more.

Cheers,

Neale

 

[Daveptkd]

Unfortunately, sounds like yet another victim of Standard Issue Dwarf Gourami Disease.

Virtually all commercially bred stock is infected, and the only reason they are alive on the fish farms is that they are tanked up with antibiotics. Once they are shipped, they infection gradually gets worse, and it can prove fatal for a variety of reasons. Improper water chemistry, for example (they need warm, soft, acid, and nitrate-free water to do well). The symptoms are pretty well standard: bloating, lack of movement, poor colours, heavy breathing, and finally open sores and white patches of dead skin.

Ram cichlids and neon tetras suffer from much the same problem. Because we want cheap fish, and because people keep buying them, the massive mortality rates common to these fishes doesn't seem to faze the fish breeders and retailers at all. In my opinion, this is very saddening.

From casual conversations with retailers and fishkeepers, I would say the mortality rate for dwarf gouramis, within the first year of being exported, is worse than 50%.

Personally, I wouldn't ever waste my money on dwarf gouramis except from a local breeder. I certainly wouldn't recommend you go out and buy some more.

Cheers,

Neale

Hi,

Sorry my reply is so late, you know how busy things can get with work!!

Thanks for the info, one of my other females is "heavy breathing" also, so I should probably expect to lose her, and then my male too at some point shame really, but I won't be buying any more.

My most trouble free fish has been my danios (although one is getting very thin) and my albino bristlenose!! anything slightly "fancy" seems to be such a pain in the 4ss!

thanks again

Dave

 

[nmonks]

Exactly so. When something is bred for a certain colour or fin length or shape, this involves breeding back offspring to parent, cousins to cousins, and so on. Inbreeding never does anything for hardiness. The more "natural" a fish is, the hardier it will be. Guppies are the classic example: originally tough as old boots, now rather delicate.

As far as gouramis go, I've always liked moonlight and lace gouramis, though they are quite large. At the smaller end of the scale, sparkling and croaking gouramis are a lot of fun, and my experience of sparkling gouramis was that they were quite tough, despite their size. Though it isn't a gourami, Badis badis is closely related to them, and a terrific little perch-like fish if you want something colourful to skulk around an aquarium. It's a bit fiddly to feed (won't take flake) but it is otherwise easy enough to care for.

Cheers,

Neale

My most trouble free fish has been my danios (although one is getting very thin) and my albino bristlenose!! anything slightly "fancy" seems to be such a pain in the 4ss!