Dwarf Gourami Performing Badly!

[falcodarkzz]

I recently got a couple of dwarf gouramis, one male one female.
The male is doign fine, and I have a qestion about the male is it normal for him to squirt water in the air at the tank surface!?
The female on the other hand is very still and hides often, my male silver mollie launches attacks on her biting and wakcing her.
She then flees, I don't know why she doesnt fight back since she is far bigger.
Do you think I should take her back?

 

[nmonks]

I have a book called "Bettas, Gouramis, and other Anabantoids" within which gouramis are described as being able to spit at insects in the same way as archerfish. There is a photograph of a three-spot gourami spitting down a fly. So, while it isn't common behaviour, it isn't unknown.

Cheers,

Neale

The male is doign fine, and I have a qestion about the male is it normal for him to squirt water in the air at the tank surface!?

 

[falcodarkzz]

I have a book called "Bettas, Gouramis, and other Anabantoids" within which gouramis are described as being able to spit at insects in the same way as archerfish. There is a photograph of a three-spot gourami spitting down a fly. So, while it isn't common behaviour, it isn't unknown.

Cheers,

Neale

The male is doign fine, and I have a qestion about the male is it normal for him to squirt water in the air at the tank surface!?

He does it every second of his waking hours

 

[nmonks]

Well that is odd. Given how massively inbred and genetically messed up dwarf gouramis are, this may be a psychological or physical problem. He could be trying to breathe air, as he should, but has a deformity of some kind that prevents normal breathing. Or maybe he's trying to make a bubblenest, but doesn't know how. Who knows?

Cheers,

Neale

He does it every second of his waking hours

 

[falcodarkzz]

It seens a bit useless to me, I know he is trying to hit insects, but even in the wild he wouldn't have a hope in hell of doing so by shooting water a few centimetres in the air.
He hasn't been doing it so often latley, but I will keep an eye on him. B)

 

[sylvia]

Obviously this is another one of my belated replies ... That's actualy quite common behaviour derived from the wild. It's perfectly normal and nothing to worry about. Not all gouramies do this in captivity and I know it probably looks quite feeble, but that squirting trick obviously has some use or else the fish would never have evolved it as a technique for catching insects . Even if it only helps them grab one extra meal, it may make the difference between life and death in the wild. In my experience, fish that do this in captivity usualy learn to do it around feeding time or as soon as they see their owner (ie: 'food') approach. It's realy more an instinctive response than anything else so they don't appreciate that there are no insects within reach of their aquarium I imagine most don't even know what an 'insect' is

 

[tetras4me]

nope some kinds of goramis tend to do that occasonaly