Dwarf Gourami And His Bubble Nest

[Bex]

Hi all

Our sunset dwarf gourami has built a big, thick bubble nest in the corner of our tank. He's in a big community tank. He is really protective of it and is chasing all the other fish away from it except the female gourami.

The female doesn't look like she carrying any eggs. Is this normal behaviour from the male with an empty bubble nest? This is the first time he's made a bubble nest. Are we likely to get any eggs and how do they do it?

 

[DarkEntity]

He could be coming of age as it were and startin to show off to the females, enticing them to start producing young.

 

[sylvia]

This is typical behaviour. Male gouramies don't care whether there are any eggs or not. If you do get eggs, he'll start chasing the female away as well.

If the female's not gravid, you won't get eggs no matter how hard the male tries to get her attention. Even if she is, they won't last long in a community more often than not. If they get as far as hatching, the fry will either starve or get eaten (if it's a well-planted tank, they may manage to find food but it's rare that a typical community will ignore fry for long enough to allow them time to grow up).

Still, the actual spawning process is interesting to watch. The male will start displaying, trying to entice the female over, 'herding' her. If she agrees to spawn, he'll rap his body around her like this: http/z.about.com/d/freshaquarium/1/0/-/1/betta02.jpg (those, obviously, are Betta splendens ). Once she's layed the eggs and he's fertilised them, he'll start picking those that have strayed away or sunk and placing them in the nest. He then guards the nest, occasionaly 'cleaning' the eggs and removing fungused ones.

BTW, I did try to find some dwarf gouramies in the nuptial embrace but I couldn't fiind any good ones - not realy of any of the common gouramies in fact (except, obviously, those two bettas!). Betta people tend to take more pics

 

[Bex]

Thanks Sylvia! I tried looking for pics of them as well but didn't get very far. He's now chasing the female away as well but I'm pretty sure there are no eggs. The nest is fairly well hidden though behind some plants in the top corner so it's quite hard to see. Plus the bubble nest looks to be very thick.

I'm pretty sure I'd have noticed if any of the females were gravid, and it's a fairly aggressive community with tiger barbs and an RTBS. The gourami is even chasing him off, giving him taste of his own medicine.

I'm not expecting to see anything come of this. Mind you, he's doing a great job of protecting it so if there are any eggs in there, then who knows!

I really need to do a water change on this tank, but I don't want to disturb his nest at the moment because of how he is with it. Even if I go to the side to have a look he comes swimming over, like he's trying to scare me away Will it be ok to try and do a very gentle water change? Willl lowering the level of water break it up or are they quite strong? I don't want to upset him too much, will it stress him out if it gets broken up?

Thanks for all the advice so far!

 

[sylvia]

Doing a water change usualy won't break up the nest if all that happens is a change in water level but you'll probably find that lowering the water disrupts the 'framework' of the nest (often bits of plants, leaves etc) and any current usualy changes direction and/or becomes stronger when you're changing water because of the restricted space and/or position of the filter.

Having said that, he won't suffer if you happen to destroy the nest. If he is realy 'in the mood' he'll probably rebuild it anyway.

BUT, if you want to deffinately see how things turn out, postpone your water change (provided it's not for something urgent) for a couple of days. It only takes that long for fry to hatch and become free-swimming so if there's anything in the nest, you'll know very soon .

 

[Bex]

Cheers Sylvia

Will postpone it for a couple of days just to see.