What goes with gouramis?

[Bo Sox Fan]

I'm "Restarting" a tank that recently had a "breakdown" of sorts in which the water quality quickly deteriorated and killed off all the fish except one blue gourami in about 5 hours. Besides a betta, what goes well with gouramis once I have the tank up and running again? Also, what are some basic rules for taking care of plants?


20 gallon freshwater
1 blue gourami

 

[Alien Anna]

Bettas are really bad tank mates for a gourami. Btw, I looked up "blue gourami" and discovered that there are two species that go by that same common name, most usually Trichogaster trichopterus, also known as "Three-spot gourami".

T.trichopterus is a good community fish that grows to about 4" long (not including tail). He'd be ideal with tetras, danios, most kinds of barb (except tiger barbs), rasboras, pencilfish, corys, dwarf plecs... and of course, a female T.trichopterus. Make sure it is a female however, as they'll fight. T.trichopterus is absolutely fine on his own, however - gouramis are certainly not schooling fish.

Here's a few species you might want to look at as tank-mates:

Neons
Cardinal tetras
Black neon tetras
False rummy-nosed tetras
Head-and-tail-light tetras
Zebra danios
Cherry barbs
Gold barbs
Harlequin rasboras
White Cloud Mountain minnows
Beckford's pencilfish
Dwarf coryadoras catfish
Oto catfish (otocinclus)
Bristlenosed plec (ancistrus)

Most are schooling fish, so you need to be looking at at least 6 of the type you want, and don't forget to check their estimated adult size to make sure they'll fit in.

 

[AquaNut]

People often refer to opaline gouramis as blue gouramis. They are, after all, a beautiful shade of blue. There are, however, blue dwarf gouramis now too. These are two very different fish. If it's a dwarf, I'd say Anna's suggestions are fine. I'd be very reluctant to recommend that you put an opaline in with something as small as a neon, however. I have two opalines, and ime they are very territorial and can be rather aggressive. Any of the larger fish she mentioned would be a much safer bet, imho. Although you can have two males in the same tank if it's large enough, defnitely not in a 20 gallon.

 

[Kossy]

If you go for tetras be sure to have at least 8-10, 6 is simply not enough for this type of fish. These are small pirahnas if you saw there teeth you'ld cry. There not aggressive the only thing you will notice is that when they feed they feed like pirahnas i.e rip a bit of food and swim away chew it and do the same till their full. happy fish keeping