Help! What's wrong with my gourami!?

We just got a dwarf gourami on friday about 5cm long. We put him in the tank and seemed fine. But yesterday we noticed that all he does is lean on something in the tank and barely moves around. Then when he does swim he kind leans to his side. Ok, just now I noticed a huge lump on his left side! It's about the middle of his body but a little bit lower. The size of the lump is about the size of your pinky finger nail and it sticks out about 3mm. There is no discoloration and he looks healthy but doesn't really act healthy. He'll swim no higher than the middle of the tank and It seems that he tries eating but then he spits it back out. Also he's always opening and closing his mouth like he's trying to breath. The only thing I can think of is that he ate our water frog but I don't see how he would be able to fit it in his mouth. What is the problem? What should I do?

Kristy

 

ok, we found out he didn't eat the frog, we just found him!

 

When I fisrt got my gourami they were very shy for about 2 days hiding in the java fern and leaning into plants, I frequently looked in and wondered where they had gone.
So firstly I thought maybe yours was just shy too however. Although now you mention the lump on his side which makes me think he has a disease or something. I know some fish can have a disease called swimbladder which un-blalances them in the tank (maaybe causing them to lean?) I'm not sure if this can be treated but more information can be found on this link:

https://www.fishlore.com/Disease.htm

Hope this works, keep us posted!

 

hI pauliface, I am not entirely sure but it sounds as though he may have an ulcer of sorts our blue orfe had this and it looks okish to begin with however it will soon look red and sore as it fills up with gunk, jaws (our orfe) stopped eating and basicly stopped swimming he stayed in one place panting, we treated him with internal bacteria but found that it didn't help that much.We then treated him with melafix which did the trick and he is now back to his old self again although you can still see the little mark left by the blister. If you use pimafix in conjunction with melafix it is supposed to accelerate healing although I have never combined the two so I'm not sure if this is accurate or not hope this helps

 

Unfortunately our gourami has died. We took him to the fish shop to see if they knew what was wrong and the guy told us it was just a growth and there wasn't really anything we could do =0( Thanks for all the help though

Kristy