Dwarf Gourami With A Red Gill

[confusion]

I have a dwarf gourami that has a reddish looking gill. It seems red through the normally silver plate over the gill - the gill on the other side looks normal. It looks relatively normal when you look through the gill slit.

He's not been acting quite right in some time. He was in my 55G community and I moved him to the new tank because it was moderately overstocked. He was hiding in the plants in that tank.

In the new tank, he's much more active, but he's not very interested in eating, and gouramis are normally aggressive eaters, so that's a flag for me. He pecks at plants and at the gravel now and again, but mostly ignores feeding time. Also, he spends some time under drift wood, but I'm thinking he may be picking at the shrimp who hide under there, not sure though.

Here are the tank details:
New 29G tank - cycled by swapping a new caniser filter with one from another tank
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 20
Temp 80F
Tankmates
- 1 angel (1"), 2 other angels (.5") - awaiting the completion of my angel tank
- 4 platies
- 3 sunset honey gouramis
- 5 ghost shrimp

Any ideas? I pulled him out and looked closely at the gill and can't see any signs of parasites hanging out.

 

[WILDER]

Red gills poor water quality, bacterial to gill flukes.
You need to look behind the gill flaps with a magifying glass to see the parasite.
Is the fish flicking and rubbing on objects, laboured breathing, does the fish spit food out.
Any weight loss.
Lost any fish recently.

 

[WILDER]

Confusion what was your stats in the other tank with it being overstocked, as if stats were off it could of caused the red gill on the fish.

 

[confusion]

No flicking or labored breathing or fish loss. Things have been quite well for a while now. One of the platies came from the LFS with a fungal problem on it's fin, and I pulled the airstone out of this tank to go into my 2.5G QT, and I noticed that (probably after too long) that the fish in the 29G were breathing very hard. I got a new airstone and pump in the tank right away and the heavy breathing stopped right away. That was about 3 days ago. Not sure that would be related.

I'll do a water change tonight. The tank has only been up for about 5 days and has had 2 50% water changes in that time - mostly because I added a piece of driftwood and wanted to make sure I got out any contaiminents that might be left despite baking, soaking and boiling the wood.

I'll find a magnifying glass to take a closer look as well. Do they stick outside of the gill, or do I need to look inside the gill somehow?

 

[WILDER]

This tells you how to do it.
http/www.aquaessentials.co.uk/index.php?...products_id=138

http/www.thetropicaltank.co.uk/hdgilld.htm