I'd love to get some of these gouramis

[Elisabeth83]

I have been eyeing a pair of blue dwarf gouramis/cobalt powder blue gouramis at my lfs. They are so beautiful

I have a 30 gallon and it houses 7 male guppies and 6 corys I am just wondering if the gouramis could fit..or will I be overstocked if I do?

The corys will get to about 2-3 inches a piece..so maybe I am already stocked to my limit? Theres no way I can get another tank...but those gouramis are just pulling my heart!!

 

[sylvia]

Yes, gouramies are wonderful fish
Strictly speaking, you are pretty much stocked to your limit. The only way to be certain is a nitrate test kit and be prepaired to remove fish if need be.
Sometimes it is possible to 'overstock' a tank if the fish wont be competeing on space (from different water levels), or if you have a good filtration system or strict maintainance schedual. Gouramies preffer the upper water layers while guppies will swim at all levels and cories usualy near the substrate. So in terms of competition for space, you do have more room. However, the only way to realy know whether you can add these new fish or not, is to buy a nitrate test kit and see when the nitrate gets too high - that's when you need to perform a partial water change to dilute the nitrate - if this is every two weeks, for example, then you should have space for the gouramies provided you don't overfeed and are prepaired to increase the frequency of water changes to whatever your nitrate test kit indicates. You could also just get one, still using the nitrates to judge whether that is a good idea or not, and add two more females whenever space becomes available. Plants should help keep nitrates down BTW.