Dwarf Gourami Scare

[weary01]

hi,

all of a sudden my male dwarf gourami has been acting strange and is often frightened by my presence and swims behind rocks or near the filter and flares up. any possibly reason? i did have one other male dwarf gourami but it got too stressed by the other gourami and died, could this have anything to do with this gourami's strange behaviour?

cheers

 

[erk628]

hi,

all of a sudden my male dwarf gourami has been acting strange and is often frightened by my presence and swims behind rocks or near the filter and flares up. any possibly reason? i did have one other male dwarf gourami but it got too stressed by the other gourami and died, could this have anything to do with this gourami's strange behaviour?

cheers

Was this something that he didn't do when the other gourami was in the tank? He also may be getting more aggressive as he gets older. I know that has been true with my oscar and green terrors.

 

[weary01]

ah k, no it wasn something that occurred while the other gourami was there, i could stick my hand in there to re position plants an what not an it wouldn bother it. but yeh i think he is old now as he has gotten fairly large in size, i've only had him in my tank for 3-4 months now, i have noticed he gets aggressive towards my platy occassionaly.

cheers

 

[minxfishy]

Dwarf gouramis can be territorial so if he has his place and the platy is invading he is just chasing it away.

Can I ask do you have water stats for the tank? Maybe something is bothering him and making him stressed.

 

[Syphoniera]

This is probably totally irrelevant, but various toxins can make fish either/both nervous and aggressive, whether ammonia, chemical or heavy metals - and that's also a sign of a worm/nematode infestation.
It's 6 AM here and I'm too dozy to look anything up right now, but what exactly happened when the other gourami died?
What signs were evident before he died?
Not that I'm any expert, but I've lost fish to this kind of thing, and spent a lot of time searching out info - might even remember enough to find some of it again, if you think it a possibility.