Female Bully Male?

[Piti]

Hello, about two weeks ago i purchased what i thought was a male and female pearl gourami (pics will be up later) but it is bothering me that the one that is supposed to be the female is bullying the male so much that he is hiding behinde a nicely placed piece of driftwood expecially after and during feeding. They are both 2inches, male has pointy tail and top fin and small trailing tailly bits, female is rounded top bottom and heart shape back fin, both same colour but when aquired male was very orange chested. My worry is that its very voilent,and not sexual in nature (or is it?) Is this normal? Is the dude's life in danger? Are my genders messed up?

 

[Twinklecaz]

No it sounds like the genders are right, it's the males who have the red chest bit. Unless your "female" is just a very young male that hasn't developed his his red yet?

I don't know loads about Pearls but I hear they do have a tendancy to be bullies. Really this is a judgement call - does this only happen at meal times or does your male hide and seem worried all the time? If it's just meal times and they get along fine the rest of the time then as long as he is getting some food then he might be ok.

If it's more than this though then the most likely problem won't be that the female will actually kill the male, it'll be that she stresses him so much that he falls ill. I had a similar situation with a male Honey. As soon as he hit maturity he started bully the female, gradually moving up to trying to nip her constantly and eventually she got a bacterial infection and died.