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Good evening, all.

I've been recently changing my 38 gallon tank around. Yesterday I completed the stocking with two dwarf gouramis and 5 otos.

I acclimated them together for about 45 minutes by the drip method. I came home tonight to find one of the gouramis dead (although he did not look sick at all when I purchased him, nor did he have any symptoms earlier today). Water params are as follows:

pH: 7.9
NH3: 0 ppm
NO2: .25 ppm
NO3: 30 ppm
GH: 11 dH
KH: 8 dH
PO4: 2.5 ppm

I thought the tank had completely cycled, but apparently not as I have an NO2 reading. Since the rearrangement around Christmas, I never got an NH3 or NO2 reading until now, and the NO3 was rising. The tank may just be going through a mini-cycle.

In any event, I am looking for a cause of this gourami's death. While there is NO2, I can't imagine that .25 ppm is anywhere close to a lethal amount. Additionally, I can't believe that there was an acclimation issue as the otos are all swimming happily.

Just for some extra info, here are the water test results since I began the conversion.

Any opinions would be appreciated.

Joe Potato

Nitrate maybe, IMO though it's just as likely the fish its self. I kept a dwarf gourami once and it died within a week while more sensitive fish from the same store thrived. Dwarf gouramis have a horrible reputation for being inbred. A good batch of dwarf gouramis will all look very simmilar- in most stores it's hard to believe they're the same fish. Also, it should have red and orange stripes of somewhat even thickness (though even on great specimins the blue seems to dominate from what i've seen), and most importantly there should be very few broken or merging lines between the colors. Stay away from variations of dwarf gouramis as well.

Yeah, I had a dwarf honey gourami and it only lived for about 2-3 months then it died for absolutely no reason. The tank was clean and well established, all the other fish were perfectly okay. It showed no symptoms of anything being wrong before it died. Someone here mentioned that a lot of the time dwarf gouramis are inbred and the "honey" or "flame" ones are sometimes dyed to enhance their color. I love them, they are super cute fish, but I wouldn't buy any more unless I knew they were coming from a very small reputable breeder.

- Meow -

Actually there has been a disease discovered recently
in Dwarf Gouramis, that is currently present in about 60% of all commercially bred gouramis.
I wouldnt doubt that was what killed them, the disease coupled with the stress of being moved.
Practical Fishkeeping has the article about the disease.
I believe it is called Dwarf Gourami Iridovirus or something similar to that.




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Hmm. That's pretty interesting, Sneaky. I don't get PF; do you remember what the article said about the disease symptom or treatment-wise? I just want to know what to look for with the other gourami.

Joe Potato

The article stated there was no known cure yet,
symptoms include lethargic behaviour, possible
open wounds, or healthy fish simply "dropping dead",
as well as emaciation and overall appearance of
being sick with some kind of bacterial infection.
As its a virus, there may not ever be a possible cure.

Heres a link to PF, it might still have the article on the archives, it was either last months dec issue, or the november one.

http://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/pfk/pages/home.php

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