Sick gourami? Or knocked up gourami?

[natescape]

Hi all. First post. *celebrate

I have a 35 gallon tank with 6 gouramis, including two blue (three spot) gouramis. The tank held goldfish in the past, but when the last GF died a month ago, I let the tank sit, then cleaned it thoroughly, let it filter for a week, and bought the gouramis last Friday.

Last Saturday, the two blue gouramis looked to be mating or something (honestly, it looked like they were 69-ing). Anyway, now one of them looks kinda sickly and is behaving oddly. The tips of her tailfin has some red dots on it that I don't remember seeing before, and there appear to be white flecks or scales(?) behind the head. It's kinda fluttering in the water, rapidly flicking its fins and staying in the flow of water from the filter.

Ideas? Is it sick, or pregnant? The other blue chases it around some. The other five gouramis all appear to be fine.

 

[jeremy]

Gouramis dont get pregnant per say. They are bubblenest builders. It sounds like it might be sick. It would be better to tell if you had a pic of it on here. But I think it is on its way out

 

[TLH]

White spots could be Ich or if they are more like scales then hey could be flukes or lice.
Have a look through this site and see if you can identify whats going on.
http://www.fishpalace.org/Disease.html

If it is Ich then raise the temp to 28-30 degrees(why can't I ever use ASCII here?)for a week or more.Ich can't stand the high temps but your Gouramis can.Don't be scared if you see them gulping air,they can breath it.

As to the red spots hopefully thats just a bacterial infection.Some Melafix or similar product should cure that.There is a posibility it could be more serious though,like fish Tuberculosis or Hemorrhagic Septicemia.You'd need an antibiotic for that.

The courting dance is when they wrap themselves around each other.I think that's what you were describing.If they are going to mate they'll start building a bubble nest.You should read up on that when and if it happens.You'll probably have to seperate them.I think you should really only keep a pair on their own anyway.

 

[natescape]

I have turned temp as high as the heater will go (84, from 80 before). We'll see.

I'll stop by the fish store to see if I can get any medicine.

 

[Big Vine]

The courting dance is when they wrap themselves around each other.I think that's what you were describing.

Yes, but they'd also be doing this from the upper part of the tank and then dropping down to the bottom together while doing so (if they were mating).

What natescape was describing sounds exactly like fighting to me. My opaline and gold gouramies did this exact same thing when I had them (several years ago), and they ended up a little "black and blue" and all-around stressed. I lost two in the process before coming to the conclusion that I could not keep these fish in a 20 gal. tank together.

Big Vine