Timid Gourami Concern

[kadkins20]

I bought a beautiful small gold honey gourami from my lfs and have had him for... i'm gonna say about two weeks now and almost everything is going perfect, but i do have a couple of concerns.

The first is that the gourami is so timid that even when i feed them he waits for food to fall to the bottom before he even thinks about eating (i'm hoping this will clear up as he gets older - i thought it would clear up after a couple days of getting used to his new environment, but so far this doesn't seem to be the case). He still does eat, so i'm not worried about him starving, but this leads me into the second concern.

I have 8 other fish in the 15-gallon and it has been up for a little under 2 months (don't worry, i added them slowly and monitored the water quality - there's been no detectable ammonia or nitrite since the end of the second week) and one of them is an absolutely enormous female swordtail and im afraid i may be overfeeding her. The problem as i see it is that in order to get the gourami to eat, i have to feed them enough that it doesn't all get eaten at the surface, and i'm afraid this may be overfeeding (i've been working around this problem by not feeding them everyday so that even if she does overeat it only happens occasionally)

I'd like suggestions and advice on how to deal with it. I have a few ideas of my own, and some that just won't work and i'll detail them.

I can't get female honeys: none of my lfs carry them and i dont want to order them and have one die and have a gourami battle in my tank go on for weeks while i wait for a delivery. I could get males, but the tank can't support too many more fish and i've heard small groups tend to battle.
I don't have a backing in my tank. and i could put anything on the back and maybe even one side of it to make him feel less exposed, at least until he's more settled (will this work?).
I could lower the flow on my filter, as i've heard gouramis prefer very calm surface waters.
I could get more tall plants; i've heard gouramis also like plants in their tanks, and i only have one plant that is over a few inches tall (i bought a wisteria plant that is now growing and helping to alleviate this).

I can't think of any more ideas and i would like any advice you can give, especially if wouldn't be very expensive Thanks

 

[ThePiggy]

Maybe you could get a sinking food for your gourami.

 

[kadkins20]

Maybe you could get a sinking food for your gourami.

that's a great idea! i hadn't even considered that, thanks, i'll look into it. Time for work now though boo!

 

[Reesy1989]

What other fish do you have in the tank?

It could just need more time to adjust to the new tank? As piggy sugested get some sinking food and start him off with that. When she builds up confidence and adjusts to the tank I'm sure that he will eat from the surface eventually.

However all gouramis are different and trying to hard could stress the fish out.

I have heard that they like cucumber? try adding a weight to it and putting it in your tank see if he will eat that?

 

[Jodiem]

i had some of your gouramis, add floating plants, as soon as i put them in the tank my male came straight to the top. I brought mine off of ebay. the water lettuce in kinda all dead now but i think frogbit or something like tht has long roots.

Hope this helps
Jodie