Tropical Fish Forum
Tropical Fish Keeping Help and Advice => New Fishkeepers => Topic started by: Adrian G on June 20, 2015, 12:47:41 PM
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Hi there
Just joined the forum although I've been using the site for reference for a while. Recently invested in a trigon 190 and trying to plan my community mix. I'd really like to get a pair of pearl gourami and my daughter's got her heart set on putting a pair of dwarf gourami in there - is there likely to be any compatibility issue between them?
Thanks
Adrian
Ps if it's relevant the ultimate plan is to start with some cherry barbs and ultimately have some corys, pentazona barbs and cardinals in there, plus maybe some otos if the algae starts to build up
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In theory they should be OK. Pearl gouramis are less aggressive than some other species, though male dwarfs can be a bit nasty. The only thing I would caution about is health problems with dwarf gouramis. A lot of them already have the incurable dwarf gourami iridovirus when bought. Make sure the shop tank has only healthy gouramis in it. If there is any sign of a sick or dead one, don't get them from there.
Make sure you have tall plants or other decor to beak up their line of sight. And keep an eye on the dwarfs as some males can harass a female to death. A trio of 1 male 2 females is better than a pair, though for some reason shops tend to sell this species as pairs only.
The gouramis that cause most problems are varieties of three spot. This comes in many different colours and people who are unaware of this can end up buying two different coloured males, resulting in a lot of aggression. Males of this species can also be aggressive towards other tank mates.
The ultimate plan sounds fine :)
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Great thanks Sue I'd seen the warnings about potential disease problems with the dwarf gouramis so maybe I'll take a rain check on those. :fishy1: