MEAN gold gourami

[hyunelan2]

Saturday I brought home 2 female gold gouramis. After reading on aquariumfish.net that 1 male (my blue) should have a mixture of several gold, blue opaline females. I had a 1:1 ratio, so decided to get more. The gold gouramis were of your typical fish-store size, 1"-1.5". The one killed the other one yesterday. It relentlessly chased it around the tank. Once she was the only gold one left, she started going after other fish. It's funny when she picks on the 5" blue gourami because they just ignore it, but this stupid fish even chases around the small zebra danios that it HAS to know are not gourami.

I find it extremely odd that a female is this aggressive. What can I do to mellow this fish out? I took my receipt and dead fish to the petstore and got a gold male hoping he would force her to chill out - but so far, it's more of the same. I'm trying to get my QT tank I bought last night up as quickly as possible, but it's brand new, not even stickers off it yet. I don't want to kill the fish, and the LFS won't take back fish.

Any suggestions?

 

[phOOey]

at that size it is kinda hard to sex gouramis, it is possible that you got males.

buying another male was a bad idea, i'm surprised your current blue gourami hasnt already killed it. i would just take both the gold ones back, because i cant see them living for too long in a tank with a big male gourami.

 

[hyunelan2]

I would wager money that it (they) were female. They had the rounded dorsel fin (as opposed to the more-pointy male fin) and their colors were not quite as brilliant as the males. Maybe I underestimated their size descrption when I posted above, as they are big enough to see difference in them.

 

[FroggyFox]

You might try netting the mean one. Literally putting it in your net and then securing the net somehow in the tank (my tanks have a lip I can set the net on so that the fish is still in water, and I can still close the lid and walk away) Leave it in "solitary confinement" for an hour or so...and then see if the behavior is the same. If that doesn't work you could make up a bucket of dechlorinated water the same temp as the tank, net the fish and put it in the bucket and leave it there for awhile. It'll be fine for an hour or so without aeration or anything. Gouramis are similar to bettas with their different tempraments. If a treatment or two of solitary doesn't work...I'd just take the fish back to the store and let them know you dont want it. Its no use keeping a fish that is going to just kill all of your other fish.

I also agree that keeping two males in the tank where there is a female involved is probably a bad idea.

 

[NoDeltaH2O]

alltime meanest "community fish" you have there. Get rid of it. I've tried the solitary confinement treatment to no avail. IMO, you've got 2 choices:

1. return it
2. dispose of it...

 

[Fish Friend]

Ive got an agressive pearl gourami in my tank... it only chases the male 'n' female guppies but it doesnt bully the male as much as the female, it forces her to go hiding in a plant at the back, thats the only refuge that she get from him, hes calmed down a little now but no worries..

 

[hyunelan2]

I took the aggressive female out and put her in my 10g QT that I just got up and running. The gold male that I added is in pretty bad shape too. He might pull through but he got bullied pretty bad by that stupid female. Now this ends my experience with Gold Gourami in my community tank. I don't even know how these things would live in ANY tank, since the female would go after anything, gourami or not (like my Zebra Danios). Maybe I just got an extremely ill-tempered fish, because the other 2 golds (the dead one, and the replacement male) have not cared at all about any of the other fish in the tank?

 

[svetlana]

I do not like gouramis b/c they are prone to sudden fatal illnesses. My gouramis did not show aggerssion b/c they felt bad most of the time. It went like this: whoever was less ill harrassed sicker one until they all died slowly among happy and healthy fishes of other species. This ended their presence in any of my tanks.

 

[denden]

i just picked up 2 gold and they are fine in my 55 i also got 2 blue and 2 opaline at the same time they are all getting along fine in my tank i already have a cichlid in the tank and a pl*co along with a male and a female emerald cory's they cichlid has not looked this pretty in a year or so he is about 3 years old and the most beautiful he has ever been but the gourami's are meshing well in my big empty tank lots of rocks to hide in from each other the drift wood belongs to the cichlid but the others love to tease him once in a while swimming though his house