Gourami behavior?

[usersrdum]

I have 4 Gourami in my planted 46 Bow tank. 2 Pearl, 1 Red, and 1 Neon Blue. The larger of the Pearl Gourami is dominating the tank, running all the other Gourami around making them hide in corners. All of them seam a little aggressive to each other but they leave the other type fish alone. I really don't want to get rid of the "bully". He is a very beautiful fish.

My question is:
Is this normal behavior?
Are the other Gourami's going to get stressed out and die?
Should I add more Gourami's to the tank? The reason I ask that is everytime I see the Gourami tanks at the store, they are loaded with Gourami's and they don't seam to bother each other.


Thanks

[wellbiz]

Originally Posted by usersrdum

I have 4 Gourami in my planted 46 Bow tank. 2 Pearl, 1 Red, and 1 Neon Blue. The larger of the Pearl Gourami is dominating the tank, running all the other Gourami around making them hide in corners. All of them seam a little aggressive to each other but they leave the other type fish alone. I really don't want to get rid of the "bully". He is a very beautiful fish.

My question is:
Is this normal behavior?
Are the other Gourami's going to get stressed out and die?
Should I add more Gourami's to the tank? The reason I ask that is everytime I see the Gourami tanks at the store, they are loaded with Gourami's and they don't seam to bother each other.


Thanks

Removing the bully will only cause one of the others to fill his shoes... Unfortunatley it is very uncommon to get more than one dwarf gourami in one tank to live peacfully..... So yes it its normal behavior, and yes they can and may kill each other...

Jason

[Clone]

I had a Opaline groumi that dominated lager peal, moonlight and kissing groumis. The strangest thing about him is would immediatly attack any introduced fish that was blue. When I took him out the other gouramis were not as dominating. There was still a pecking order for food but no outright hostility.

[Mori]

I don't think they bully in the store as much because they're usually too young to be territorial.

[Fat Guy]

Gouramis are not great when thrown all together in a tank. They will continue to attack each other and the entire hierarchy thing will stay in place. Interesting at first, then very annoying to watch your fish constantly chase one another. I'd recommend one gourami, and put something else in there.

[Aquaman]

I thought it would be nice to have an Asian theme tank and I got a couple of Flame Dwarf Gouramis, 2 sparkling Gouramis, some cherry barbs and some Harlequin rasboras. Long story short, the dominant Gourami killed the the other dwarf gourami, one of the sparkling, 3 cherry barbs and 1 of the rasboras. Everything seems to have settled now but he is the head honcho in there and all the fish know it.

[TNO]

We have two pearls, two dwarf gouramis and two paradise fish. No problems to speak of. After feeding they get a little aggressive with each other but it doesn't last long. We were careful to get two female pearls.

[wellbiz]

Originally Posted by Aquaman

I thought it would be nice to have an Asian theme tank and I got a couple of Flame Dwarf Gouramis, 2 sparkling Gouramis, some cherry barbs and some Harlequin rasboras. Long story short, the dominant Gourami killed the the other dwarf gourami, one of the sparkling, 3 cherry barbs and 1 of the rasboras. Everything seems to have settled now but he is the head honcho in there and all the fish know it.

MIne tries to act tuff too... Right up to the point he attempts it on the krib and gets his butt kicked :shock: