Which varieties can of Gourami fish can be put together?

Question

I have a 55 gal tank with Wisteria, Sword, Dwarf Acous, and Water sprite plants in my tank and they are established. I want as many Gouramis and varieties as possible. How many can I have and not have a problem(how many of each variety). Except for the Sword plants all planted area are faily thick and stretch the length of the tank. Any help would be appreciated. Also if anyones knows of a good place to get female gouramis that information would be a bonus. Can someone also tell me how to sex determine gouramis, that information would also be useful?

Answer 1

Sexing gouramis is fairly easy when you see them by the tanks full. At least the fish commonly sold as gourami, which is all I will get into here as other anabantoids can get trickier to keep not to mention harder to find. The males have longer and more pointed dorsal fins while the females are plumper . As for what kinds go together, all the blues, golds and the like are one species, so obviously they all go together well. Dwarf, powder blues, sunsets and the like are similar in size to each other and can cohabitate rather well. Thick-lipped and giant or banded fit well with this group too. The snakeskin gourami and kissing gourami get a bit large for this group in my opinion as does of course the true gourami, which is far too large for a 55 gallon anyway. Pearl gouramis fit right in with all of the above as would moonlights although they can get a bit large for a 55 and have room for anything else. Croaking gouramis and sparkling gouramis are too small and docile to fit in with the others. Chocolate gourami are far to sensitive to even thing about in this type of tank.

I would stick with adding pairs to the tank and as to how many, that depends on if you want mostly the larger types or the smaller types. But as they are anabantoids you can easily stretch that tank space a bit. I would say a pair of each Dwarf, powder blues, sunsets, blues, golds and pearls would make a nice display and not over tax the tank.

It could be done with either Colisa sp. or Tricogaster sp. and that would be the best mix in my opinion. In either group stick with a pair of each. With this grouping you could add in either moonlights or snakeskins without a problem, but probably not both.

Obviously I have left out many anabantoids, but those are not commonly referred to as gourami.

Answer 2

First there are lots of different types of gouramis, and most of them are very territorial. If you want a bunch i recommend, pearl, blue, gold, moonlight, possibly dwarf, paradise fish, etc. Stay away from african gouramis if you can, they tend to be much nastier and Ctenopoma are by far the worst as they need really specific water conditions in some cases and are downright nasty
the round fin trick does not work for most gouramis species, so if you get anything rare you will have to vent them or wait until they get into spawning colors. i would check out the Aqualog book on labrynth fish you wont be dissapointed!.

Answer 3

You can put any kind of gouramis together.. Females have a round fin whereas males have a pointed fin. I dont recommend buying fish at walmart, petco, petsmart or petland. Go to a local pet store that is privately owned.. They will order femlaes for you if they don't have any but they should have a large varitey of gouramis.

Answer 4

That sounds like a lot of fish for that tank. Remember to use the one inch of fish per gallon rule. Start with the first 5 species you really want in the tank and crunch the numbers. If there is still room keep going down the list until the tank is fully stocked. I hope this helped!

Answer 5

Just watch out for bettas(closely related) they will likely be attacked by other gouramis...

Answer 6

u can put it in with any semi-aggressive type of fish because they are a semi-aggressive type so u can put them in with sharks, angel fish, any other gourami fish just about any type of fish

Answer 7

guppy