male pearl gourami is aggressive towards female... concerned

shortly after he is back to his puppy dog ways and followers her around like he is on a leash

It'll work out in a few weeks.

you can feed at 2 ends of the tank so both can eat. He's not hurting her.

thanks for the advice i will try spreading out the food.

Just keep an eye on them, and only move someone if the male is chasing her non-stop or if he drives her into perpetual hiding (which does not appear to be happening in this case). Also be prepared to move someone if she loses a good chunk of one of her fins.

I will be watching very closely, I have high hopes that this is just a case of working out the new living space. The way they act outside of eating is nothing short of superb so i have faith all will work out. she had a little bit of her tail fin missing but I bought her this way and she was with him and about 20 other fish in the tank at the lfs. so who knows how it happend.

i understand that fin damage will repair itself with time so long as its not the whole tail missing.

Sometimes there need be no damaged fin's just stress..that does the fish in.

you the the 5 min every other day is enough stress to kill her or make her sick?!

I had a pair of pearls in a similar situation. As the months went by, the behavior never changed.

Eventually, the male got sick when he was old and weak - callimanus worms - and once he couldn't be aggressive, the female picked up on it and switched roles. She would chase him off and eventually did corner and kill him. I didn't bother splitting them up since I was treating the entire tank for worms.

Now, while the female isn't as pretty as the male was, I'm happy she's the one that survived. She likes human interaction and schools with my rainbows. Never a single sign of aggression from her towards the plecos, cories, rainbows or tetras. It all kind of worked out, in my case.

Sometimes, fish just don't get along.

Should have atleast 3 females to distact him from harrising the one, if she choose not to mate with him he will just bully her or kerp her in submission possible causing stress or damage to her until she is sick and dies

Wanted to update this as it may help others in the future. Over the next 2 days the male became more and more aggressive with her. I couldn't stand to watch this go on any longer so I decided to return both fish.

I swapped them out for another new pair of pearls, this pair has had no problems so far and seem to get along great all the time.

One new behavior I am noticing with the new pair is if they separate for a bit in the tank and then swim back to each other, they almost like touch faces and then do some circle like movement. almost like a ring around the rosie.

any idea on whats going on?