Gourami Attacking Only New Fish

[trianglekitty]

I managed to talk my roommates into letting me bring the rescue dwarf gourami home. That meant I could upgrade him to a 10 gallon tank. Before I brought him home I established three endlers guppies in the tank. One of them died, and I'm really not sure why. The water checks out fine.

The gourami has done fine with the two existing guppies. The tank has live plants to hide in, but he doesn't seem to notice the guppies at all. The gourami himself seems unsettled though- he constantly moves in a loop from the bottom left corner to the top right corner of the tank over and over again.

I tried to put in a third guppy, but the next morning found it dead. I chalked it up to stress and again checked the water. Yesterday I introduced another...and this time saw the gourami go at it. He managed to kill it one bite (he got in the underbelly, and it couldn't swim right afterward). He still isn't bothering the existing two at all.

So I'm thinking my gourami is being territorial. Is there anything I can do to prevent this from happening again? I read floating plants might help? Overall I think the gourami seems stressed. I'm also going to try varying his diet more.

Any tips on keeping a dwarf gourami happy and non aggressive would be much appreciated. If the answer is I can't introduce more fish, I'll deal, but I'd like to upgrade to a even bigger tank in the future and would like more than three fish in it. Having more than one tank is not an option. My best bet seems to be the floating plants from what I've read- did anyone find that actually calmed their gourami down?

 

[FreedomFighter]

Hi trianglekitty.

I will admit, I don't know much about gourami. But I have heard that they can have very unpredictable personalities.

And unfortunately it sounds like you have a very aggressive dwarf gourami.

This would make any future stocking quite difficult, as you'd need a fish that is fast, and can take a good beating.
So unfortunately, no more future guppies for you, in my opinion.

Though an experiment could be done, if you wanted to take a risk;

And that would be to bag up your gourami, and remove him from the tank.
Add a couple of new guppies in, give them a few minutes to settle, then try adding the dwarf gourami back.

It's a long shot, but he may temporarily lose his dominance over the territory. But as a warning, this will be very stressful for the gourami so I wouldn't do it too often.

But honestly, in my opinion, you're probably better off finding the gourami a new home if you want to keep more guppies.

 

[umpsfar]

heres my 2cents : Introduce a slightly larger Pearl Gourami?
Don't get one that too quiet or aggressive when choosing , thats what i would do , ive yet to see an aggressive Pearl, pearls are faster than gourami's and i feel that they have more personality, i may be wrong here but if the pearl chases the dwarf , you may have a sick dwarf. if the dwarf chases the pearl thats normal.
I would like to know what others think of that idea?

If you where to do that , remove the dwarf for a while and move stuff around.
also a thumbs up on floating plants

Edit: although others do not agree on that one
http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?/topic/346000-pearl-and-dwarf-in-same-tank/

 

[Carlovel1]

heres my 2cents : Introduce a slightly larger Pearl Gourami?
Don't get one that too quiet or aggressive when choosing , thats what i would do , ive yet to see an aggressive Pearl, pearls are faster than gourami's and i feel that they have more personality, i may be wrong here but if the pearl chases the dwarf , you may have a sick dwarf. if the dwarf chases the pearl thats normal.
I would like to know what others think of that idea?

If you where to do that , remove the dwarf for a while and move stuff around.
also a thumbs up on floating plants

Edit: although others do not agree on that one
http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?/topic/346000-pearl-and-dwarf-in-same-tank/

No it won't work, plus a 10 gallon tank is too small, you should be looking for a tank around 3X bigger to house Pearl Gouramis.
Carl