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I've got a 55-gallon community tank that I'd like to put some dwarf gouramis in. How many males and females could be put in a 55 without having excessive aggression problems?

This depends on the individual fish, and your tank. You could have a couple males--maybe three or four if your tank is heavily planted and there are defined territories/hiding places. Of course, if you are lucky and get peaceful fish, you could add more than that--and if one if really agressive, you can't. If you want to keep females too, it would be a good idea to keep more females than males--idealy a 1:2 ratio because of how nasty some males can be. I once had a pair of dwarf gourami in a 20 gallon, and I will never buy a pair again. If I want females, I'll get a trio. He was very nasty, and eventually killed the female.

Also, people have success in keeping different species of gourami in the same tank. I know I do. If you want, I'm sure you could add some pearls and moonlights in addition to your dwarf gouramis.

HTH

Well, right now I've got platties and inch-long zebra danios. The only thing that worries me about the large gouramis is that they might (will?) start chomping down on the little guys. I'll probably go two males and four females, probably all introduced on the same day. Thanks for the help.

Last edited by Silverlight at 10-Oct-2004 14:27

Well, the thing with adding too many fish at the same time is that your tank's bioload will take too long to catch up. The following ammonia spike could harm or even kill some of your fish. It's best to take it slow, so I'd add just one male and two females at a time, separated over two or three weeks.

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And when he gets to Heaven, to Saint Peter he will tell: "One more Marine reporting, Sir! I've served my time in Hell."

Er, if I introduce them three weeks apart, won't the new male have problems establishing territory? If the bioload is high enough already when they're introduced, adding all of them shouldn't be a problem.

A good way to solve the territory problem is to move the ornaments and plants around in your tank, to break up all of the old territories. That way, all of the fish will have to establish their new hangouts.

The bioload being high is not a good thing, that means the fish you have are producing a lot of waste. The purpose of spacing out the additions of new fish is to let enough beneficial bacteria build up in the tank to handle the additional waste. That way, there won't be too much for the bacteria to handle, resulting in fish deaths.

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And when he gets to Heaven, to Saint Peter he will tell: "One more Marine reporting, Sir! I've served my time in Hell."

I have a 35 Gallon tank with numerous Gourami's. However they are young and will need to be moved from the tank when they are a little older I have provided a very large amount of hiding places (large amount of veg. including floating plants).

I have one single Moonlight Gourami male that seems to be a little on the aggressive side but has calmed down. You just have to keep an eye and like said before it depends on the individual fish. The other gouramis (2 Yellow, 2 Ocean Perl) Have a very timid tempterment and get along well in the tank.

Best of luck and if you do it let me know how it goes.

I had 3 male dwarf gouramis in my 90g, one day they murdered the timid 1 when I was out. I would say you should probably do a male female pair, or 2 males and 2-4 females even.
They are quite aggressive towards each other, not usually to the death, not even usually to injury, but they do have the ability, so just beware.
You could however go with 1 M/1F Dwarf, 1 Male 2-3 female Pearl Gouramis, and then a Larger Gourami like an Opaline. That would be sweet.


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It would be very unlikely that the larger Gourami would harm your platies or danios. They are usually only aggressive with their own kind. Like the other I keep a misture of Gouramies and works well.

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Thanks for the advice. I'm going to have to think about this, but I like the large-Gourami idea.

Oh yes, I keep my bigger gouramis with inch-long danios right now. The gouramis' mouths are quite small compared to their size. I wouldn't hesitate to keep them with smaller fish like neon tetras etc. Also, if you keep them with dwarf gouramis, I'd actually be more concerened with the dwarf gourami being agressive to the larger gouramis.

I have a gold gourami and a blue dwarf in my 55 gal community tank and they seem to get along great with each other and the rest of their tankmates. The only time they bother other fish is when one of my platies give birth. The gold tends to hunt the fry. But then again, I am close to getting overstocked in that tank and don't mind that at all. Good population control. We do have a heavily planted tank so we figure whomever is smart enough and fast enough will survive. We'd like to add another dwarf but we need to rehome some extra platies first so as not to overload our tank... I think the gouramis are very pretty. Just my 2c worth.

-Beth

p.s. Anyone is GA want some platies?? Free to good home.

I used to keep 2 males and 2 feamle dwarves in a 29-gal. The subordinate males generally squabibled with themselves very little because they were constantly around other dwarf gouramis. They had a lot of chances to get their aggression out. In a 55 I would add three blues, or three pearls, two dwarf males, and five or six dwarf females.

This is all good news. I wanted to get some Neons for this tank too, and it'll be a lot less nervewracking to get a gourami that doesn't hunt small fish than an angelfish, where I'd have to constantly worry about everything short of 1.5 inches (i.e. the whole tank!)! I'll just have to satisfy my cichlid pair urges with rams and keyholes.