Help With My Aggressive Gouramis!

[kevinjames]

i recently bought a male gold gourami and a female opaline gourami in hope of a peaceful pair for my community tank. on finding the male being aggressive towards the female i went to my lfs and was told introducing another female gold gourami would help... it didnt and the male became worse. i decided to remove the male to another tank but now the female opaline is being equally as aggressive as the male was!!! could anyone give me any suggestions on how to deal with this matter? my tank is about 130litres and well planted.

 

[SugarQube]

I was told to get a male and female gourami, the male killed the female I think He is still a bully in our community peaceful tank. He has put me off Gourami species altogether now No way am I going to buy another two females for him he doesn't deserve any so will have to learn to be more friendly

 

[deansmith]

i recently bought a male gold gourami and a female opaline gourami in hope of a peaceful pair for my community tank. on finding the male being aggressive towards the female i went to my lfs and was told introducing another female gold gourami would help... it didnt and the male became worse. i decided to remove the male to another tank but now the female opaline is being equally as aggressive as the male was!!! could anyone give me any suggestions on how to deal with this matter? my tank is about 130litres and well planted.

I had similar problems when i first introduced my female into the tank, at first there was an aggressive intent from the male but over a short period of time the male began to mature and did not seem to mind, also check you are feeding the male enough otherwise this may lead to aggresive tendancies, good luck Dean

 

[sylvia]

Gold and opaline (as well as blue, lavender, cosby and platinum) are color morphs of the same species - Trichogaster trichopterus. They are collectively known as three-spot gouramies (after the wild morph's pattern - two spots + the eye). They are a particularly aggressive gourami species and by no means representative of other types. If you are after a community gourami, try a trio of pearls (Trichogaster leeri) or a trio of bandeds (Colisa fasciata).

Secondly, shouldn't be kept as pairs It's a shame most LFSs don't bother to mention this or even encourage people to buy pairs. With three-spots, even a trio rarely works. Males are highly aggressive and if you remove the male, 2 females will simply turn on each other. If you keep a large group (eg: 4 females and a male), you don't have problems as aggression is split between several individuals (same as with African rift lake cichlids). However, these hardy gouramies are also extremely easy to breed and, once they spawn, aggression does increase. What I reccomend is to either keep them singly or in a large female-only group.

In your case, the pair didn't work out for the afformentioned reasons. Adding another female didn't work because she was added late and would simply be viewed as an intruder and removing the male never helps if all you have left is two fish - one of which is bound to take the male's place and dominate the other.

The solution right now, unfortunately, is simply to return two of the fish and keep the third. I'd personaly keep a female if you want a peaceful tank though a single male also works if you provide your other fish with hiding places and provide the gourami with some floating plants (to encourage him to establish one area in the tank as 'his' territory, leaving the rest alone).

Alternatively, return all three fish to your LFS and get a trio of pearls or bandeds (like I mentioned earlier) instead.