Hi All,
I have a gold gourami and a blue gourami. More than that I really don't know more about them. The gold is much large than the blue and right now it looks as if it has sawolloed a large margle. Don't know if those are eggs it is carrying or what and and don't know what their sex is. If they are eggs and there is no male what happens to the female? Right now she looks as if she is going to burst.
It sounds like your gold gourami is a mature female; they normally have a rounded figure while the male has a more smoothly tapering one.
If this is the case, you have nothing to worry about. I have an old pearl gourami who I never bred since I didn't have a male. She is healthy and none the worse for it. I suspect that most gouramis live out their lives without spawning and have no problems.
There is only one disease that would cause a gourami to swell up like you describe. That is dropsy, an almost always fatal disease. You will clearly recognize it by the fact that the fish's scales will stand out away from its body like a pine cone.
