How many dwarf Gouramis

[Yenko]

I am planning on setting up a 70 gallon planted tank, with 3 clown loaches, 6 otocinclus or SAEs and some kind of small fish. I am considering dwarf gouramis; how many of them do I have room for?

 

[sylvia]

Do you want males or females or a combination and will you be moving the clown loaches out once they get big? Also, are you going for otos or SAEs? - because there's the size difference that'll effect how many other fish you can keep. Of course, you also need to make sure the small fish you get isn't nippy and the shoal size (if it's a schooling fish) will also effect how many dwarfs you can comfortably keep. Remember that colisa gouramies tend to preffer the upper water layers - particularly for establishing territories - so getting upper-layer fish like some danios would also limmit the available space for gouramies.

If I assume there are no other fish besides the dwarfs and that all the dwarfs are male, you could keep about 7 but 5 would be more comfortable so that they can each establish territories in the upper layers. If you were to go for females - they aren't territorial or aggressive at all so you could keep something like 20 (though you obviously wouldn't do that - firstly because you wouldn't have space for the other fish and secondly because they'd be swimming one on top of the other as they'd preffer the upper layers when possible). If you went for a mixture (which is what I suggest you do), you could get about 3 males and 5 or so females (just make sure you have more females than males). You could get more but you would be leaving less space for other fish and if you get too many, you'll be over-crowding the top layers and not allowing the males to establish permanent territories.

You may also wish to consider some other gourami species - pearls are my favourite and very peaceful but hardy alternative colisa species (which are just as colorful as dwarfs and slightly larger) are colisa labiosa - the thick-lipped gourami - and colisa fasciata - often called the banded gourami, indian gourami, striped and 'giant' (don't confuse with osphronemus species!) gourami. These both get to about 4" max and have similar temperaments to dwarfs.