Guorami Head Trauma

Guorami (Gatsby):
I came home today to find this weird spot on my guorami Gatsby's head. My dad thinks it's because he hit his head, but I'm concerned because he's been acting weird lately. For the past few weeks he's been hiding, darting and kicking the water. He has been overall panicked. I believed it might be guorami aggressive behavior or something to do with mating because there's a girl guorami (Daisy) in the tank, and I'm thinking she's either fat or pregnant. Either way he has that striped panicked/stressed pattern, and he's been acting weird. There has also been a lot of heavy storms with intense lightning going on lately, so I'm not sure if that might have some impact on fish....
The tank parameters:
I have been fighting an abundance of nitrates for a while now. They have been insanely high. Also, yesterday my heater freaked and the tank went up to 88F, so I'm not sure if that exacerbated the problem. We are currently steady at 80F.

pH - 7.4
Ammonia - 0.1 ppm
Nitrite - 0 ppm
Nitrate - 160 ppm

I will take any advice on how to deal with the nitrates, but right now my main concern is Gatsby.
Thank You!

 

HI there. I can't see the pictures very well, so can you please look up HITH (hole in the head) and compare it?
If that is it, it's likely linked to the very high nitrates, and I feel a good deal of stress can be linked to those as well. I don't let mine go over 10, and most don't let them over 20.
Here's the tricky part; you can't just do 3-4 50% water changes and solve the problem. That risks nitrate shock, which is more dangerous. You'll want to do multiple 10% water changes a day until they come down to a more acceptable level. And I mean, 3-5 daily for about a week.
Do you know why the nitrates are so high? How often do you do water changes?
There is one other thing that comes to mind besides HITH, but I'd like to check out HITH first
Edit: I'm sorry for talking about the nitrates, but I truly believe his head and the nitrates are linked, sorry to say

 

HI there. I can't see the pictures very well, so can you please look up HITH (hole in the head) and compare it?
If that is it, it's likely linked to the very high nitrates, and I feel a good deal of stress can be linked to those as well. I don't let mine go over 10, and most don't let them over 20.
Here's the tricky part; you can't just do 3-4 50% water changes and solve the problem. That risks nitrate shock, which is more dangerous. You'll want to do multiple 10% water changes a day until they come down to a more acceptable level. And I mean, 3-5 daily for about a week.
Do you know why the nitrates are so high? How often do you do water changes?
There is one other thing that comes to mind besides HITH, but I'd like to check out HITH first
Edit: I'm sorry for talking about the nitrates, but I truly believe his head and the nitrates are linked, sorry to say

I've relooked at HitH pics to compare. I'm not entirely sure if it's that. I looked on his head again, the pale discoloration looks that way because it looks like his scales are becoming transparent in that area. Two scales behind that main spot are also becoming transparent. It's slightly visible in the pic, but I'll try and get a better one. I do not see an indentation at this moment. My thought is that it could simply be the early sign of HitH, but I'm not sure. It could be something else too, but again idk. Maybe tomorrow it might be more evident? Will it be too late?
I change the water with my dad about once every 2 weeks. It's a 20 gallon and we use a 5 gallon non-used paint bucket to change the water, so I need his help to do it. Because of this (and the fact that my dad works, and I'm a full time college student), sometimes the water change unfortunately happens after 3 weeks. We change about 50% of the water when we do.
I noticed it got really bad after our move. There was a long spurt between water changes, and the snail infestation boomed too. The move caused a lot of gunk to move up from the bottom gravel as well, and from then it spiraled out of control. Since then I've been struggling to get this back under control. I thought I was doing better, but then the heat spike and this new development proved me wrong. The nitrate test came back blood red today, so I made my dad get up and change the water with me. We just did about a 50% (I just read your caution unfortunately) water change mostly because I was trying to make sure the gravel was clean and the snails were significantly lessened.

 

So I have a Pearl Gourami that took a long nose dive after jumping from the transfer container at Petco. It's a long story but I decided to keep her. Two days later there's a spot on her head that looked exactly like what's in the pictures you posted. After doing some research I concluded (guessed?) that Columnaris attacked her. Her symptoms matched what you described. I dosed twice with Seachem Kanaplex and she recovered. Whew! Something to consider.

 

Kanaplex is good for columnaris and a lot of other things, so you may want to just go ahead and order some.
The nitrates make sense now, there are some weird things that can cause it so I just wanted to make sure it wasn't one of those. No worries, I get it.
Just to rule out one or two things:
What type of gourami do you have?
How long have you had both?
Also, if your nitrates still read as blood red tomorrow, it'll be better to do 2 30% changes, if they're closer to 80, 50% changes are fine (if you are able to do them).
And once we fix up your buddy, I can help you with a way to lower those nitrates (my goldfish tank is basically zero). And it's not more water changes.

 

its spelled gourami not guorami and also it looks like a chocolate gourami.

 

Sorry for responding so late! I kept meaning to give an update, but life kinda got in the way.
The label on Gatsby's tank said he was a golden gourami, so that's what I'm going with The mark on his head actually went away within a few days. I guess my dad was right, and he just hit his head in a mad dash. Apparently Gatsby is a quick healer.
In regards to the tank. It's about the same. The next water change I do this week I'm going to check it again to see if anything has changed since my last check. The only ones who are showing signs of distress from the nitrates are my black skirt tetras. One of them has a raised gill and it is clearly red underneath it. I'm thinking of taking him out to give him a break......

 

Kanaplex is good for columnaris and a lot of other things, so you may want to just go ahead and order some.
The nitrates make sense now, there are some weird things that can cause it so I just wanted to make sure it wasn't one of those. No worries, I get it.
Just to rule out one or two things:
What type of gourami do you have?
How long have you had both?
Also, if your nitrates still read as blood red tomorrow, it'll be better to do 2 30% changes, if they're closer to 80, 50% changes are fine (if you are able to do them).
And once we fix up your buddy, I can help you with a way to lower those nitrates (my goldfish tank is basically zero). And it's not more water changes.

Just kinda butting in on this, but you say you can help bring nitrates down. And I'd love the advice, my levels stay pretty regularly high in my tank. About 40 to 60 ppm. My nitrites are none existent and my ammonia stays between 0 and .25 ppm. I'd love some advice. And if you have an idea, maybe how to bring down my ph it's at about an 8. Which is pretty regular where I'm from.

 

To me it is an opaline (same species as gold).

Could you please place a picuc of bhoth gouramis.

The spot is on a place where they damage each other while fighting. Could be the start of HITH as well btw (though gouramis are less probe to it than cichlids)