kirsty0569

We seem to have a problem with our male dwarf gourami. He is continually harassing the female that we have added to the aquarium. The first female we had was quite small, he bullied her too and she died. So, we bought a bigger female and the male is really aggressive to her, ramming into her and chasing her all the time. I was thinking of either swapping him back at the LFS or adding an additional female to take the pressure off the other, or taking the new female back and leaving him alone with the other fish (non gourami) whom he seems fine with. He's stunning but he is a wife beater. Any suggestions or anyone with a similar problem?
Kirsty

Shawnie

if you have the space, another fem would help alot...and lots of hiding spaces as well...but id take out the nawty boy..redo the decorations in a different spot...put in the two fems, and put the nawty boy back after about an hour..goodluck

Barbrella

The male is attacking the female because he's ready to breed and she's not. Females sometimes get killed by males this way.

If you want to breed them you need to put the female into a separate tank filled with plants and condition her until she fills with eggs then put the male into her tank - not the other way around.

You'll need to remove her once the eggs are laid, as she'll be pretty badly beaten up.

If you're unable to separate them, it's best to have just the one male in the tank.

GouramiGirl1221

Shawnie gave you some great advice! If you have the space in your tank you may even try 2 more females to spread the aggression around. If the additional females and re-arranging the tank doesn't work though, I'd say you're going to have to pick between the male and the females. Good luck!

kirsty0569

Cool, thank you. So much good advice, I think I will remove bad boy from the tank and re-introduce him with redecoration and if that fails I'll introduce additional female. Failing that the bad boy will have to be swapped in for a smaller model! Thanks again. Kirsty

GouramiGuy

I am realizing how lucky I am to have docile males!!

kirsty0569

I've bought another female, so now he has two and he is very happy and very chilled out.
Here is a picture of him....

agabr123

i'm glad it worked out he's gorgeous!!!