Tankmates for Gouramis

mileshs95

i have a three spot gourami with a red tailed shark and they are great together. also red tailed sharks are beautiful fish with great personalities

Ruskull

I have (1) Gold male, (1) Gold female, (1) Opaline female & (2) Pearl females in a 36 gallon bowfront. I have (3) Albino Corries, (2) Otocinclus Cats, (6) Cherry Barbs, (4) Von Rio Tetras, and (2) Lemon Tetras. I added the Tetras yesterday & so far no problems. The male Gold is very aggressive towards the females but he usually hides in the decorations. He never hurts them but he chases them away from the top sometimes.

I really like the Cherry Barbs if you want to add color, just make sure you add them in pairs. It's really easy to distinguish male & female. Males get a very bright red while the females are brown & orange striped with pinkish fins. The males look like little red sharks & they only get around 2 inches long. Cherry Barbs are probably the smallest, most peaceful of all Barbs I've seen. They hang around the bottom of the tank mostly. PetCo had a small selection for $1 each while I paid $2 each for a better selection at PetSmart.

Von Rio Tetras are very colorful too and I got mine from PetCo for $1 each. They should be in groups of 6 or more and I can't tell if they're male or female yet. They swim in pretty tight formation & are a great schooling fish for the Gouramis since they aren't known to be nippers like Tiger Barbs for instance. These Von Rios are silver faced with a sort of flame yellow to red in the rear. They swim all around the tank at all levels. What's very interesting is that they sometimes school along with the Lemon Tetras & even the Cherry Barbs.

Hope this helps!

Ruskull

DO NOT ADD TIGER BARBS! I have personal experience with this! I added a small school of 5 Tigers and they were only .75 of an inch yet they nipped at the Gouramis pec fins relentlessly!!! Tiger Barbs should only be kept with Tiger Barbs and even then they sometimes go after each other................

Ruskull

My Gold Gourami male chased my Sailfin Moilly in my son's 20 gallon to the point where I had to get another tank for the male Three Spot. I wouldn't recommend Three Spots with Mollys...................

Ruskull

The Tiger Barbs will eventually nip at the long feelers of the Gouramis, it's inevitable. The Gouramis will chase them back to their school & then the nipping starts all over again. I had to return my Tiger Barbs.....................

Inga

Before I had a clue what I was doing (still learning something new all the time) I started a 60 gallon tank out with a handful of Tiger Barbs and 4 Gourami (2 blue, 2 Gold) I soon ended up with a war in the tank. The largest Gold Gourami was nasty and killed one of the blue and the other Gold Gourami. I got rid of her and still have the original Blue Gourami. This fish is quite peaceful as well and gets along great with everyone.

I wouldn't have recommended Tiger Barbs either, knowing what I know now but... since you have them, add another 5 or 6. I ended up with 11 and that kept the monkey shines among themselves and they never bothered my Gourami. I hope you have some nice plants and decor in your tank to help break up the line of sight also. Just in case your 2 Gourami decide to fight they might be able to claim their own areas of the tank.

Ruskull

Excellent advice. Supposedly, keeping Tiger Barbs in larger schools with odd numbers like 11 or 13, etc. tends to keep them more peaceful, but I wouldn't take that chance myself. Especially with the peaceful Pearl females I have. I don't want a stressful tank, I got mine to relax...........................

dnaranjo1

Thank you all for your advise but we are having some kind of mishap with our tank now and not to sure what has happened. Over the weekend it was starting to look cloudy we decided it was time for a water change we took out about 25% and added new water, I put in the water conditioner and the enzyme stuff that we were told to use when setting up tank and for water changes. This was on Saturday on Sunday I noticed that our Tiger Barb didn't seem as bright as they did before the water change, We had 4 males and 1 female, now they all looked female cause all their orange was pretty much gone except on 2 of them which did have the brightest orange of the 4 now it was barely visible and their black stripes were looking dull. This morning when we came downstairs we had two dead fish and the other Tigers look more like they have gray stripes than black and on one of our Dwarf's it looks like it has white specs all over it.... could this be ick? Any suggestions on what has gone wrong. Everyone was very happy before the water change, I am hoping I did not do anything wrong with what I added to tank for the water. We are hoping to get this fixed before we loose more of our fish.

Calmwaters

The cloudy water may have been the begining of a bacterial bloom and is common in new tanks. In my opinion you have added way to many fish to fast for a new unestablished tank. You said you had added real plants, how many did you add? If there were a bunch of plants it would be ok if not you should of left the water cloudy and it would of cleared up in a few days. If the fish have white spots and are acting itchey, rubbing on the tank and gravel then I would say yes it is ick and you should treat it with meds. I have had alot of success useing fizzy tabs that you can get at petsmart for ick. You really need to get a liquid test kit like the API master kit because if you do not have lots of plants you may loose alot if not all of your fish and need to be doing daily water changes with that many fish in a new tank.

dnaranjo1

I spoke with our local pet store after I posted they feel that our fish got ick from the water change if we did not have the water pretty much the same temperature of the tank water. Which no we felt the water by hand but we did not actually put a thermometer in it to be totally sure. We will be treating for ick starting today. Thanks everyone for the suggestions, we still have a lot to learn hopefully we get it all right because we are definately enjoying our tank