# Wimpy Gourami getting bullied by platy.



## Jordin (Sep 14, 2011)

Hi,

I have a dwarf gourami who was in a 250L tank with angelfish,a red tailed shark, bosemani rainbow, black tetra, sword tail and BGK.

I noticed for the past month he has been hiding behind my spraybar and in the top corners never swimming around or leaving. Today I saw the rainbow attacking him pretty bad, realising this is probably happening often... I was forced to intervene and move the gourami. 

I placed him into a 45L tank with 3 small platy fish and 2 Otocinclus.

One of the platy fish attacked him relentlessly for hours... The other 2 totally left him alone... I moved the one platy that was bullying hm into my larger community tank but as soon as I did that, the other platy decided to take his turn on the punching bag and now is assaulting the gourami! i can't believe it.....

I feel really bad for this gourami and I recently lost an angelfish due to them getting rough with each other and I don't want to lose another fish to aggression.

Do you thnk I should just leave him with the little platy fish and see if they calm down in a day or two? I could go buy a new tank tomorrow but for one small gourami I don't really want to start another new tank....I feel bad for this dwarf gourami... It is soo wimpy... 

Any thoughts or advice appreciated.


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## pyrrolin (Jan 11, 2012)

you know you are a wimp when platties pick on you. That is just sad


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## Ciddian (Mar 15, 2006)

what kind of gourami is it? There are a few types of dwarfs and some can be super delicate and shy. They sometimes only do well with their own.

Maybe take the gourami for a trade in?


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## Jordin (Sep 14, 2011)

Thanks for the replies, 

The fish is a powder blue dwarf gourami.

I turned the lights off on the tank with the platy's and gourami to help all the fish calm down and feel secure.. They are now leaving him alone and things seem to have calmed down. Maybe they also just needed to get used to him.

I am going to give it a couple days to let the gourami settle into his new environment. If the two platys continue to leave him alone, I will try to re-introduce the other platy again, hoping he will feel like the "new fish" and back off. I'll post an update in a few days.

If he continues to be bullied I will get him his own tank or see if one of my local fish shops or someone in my community can provide him with a safe aquarium environment.


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## Ryan.Wilton (Dec 12, 2012)

Probably ate too many platy babies and the crew got fed up lol. It was an old fashion lynching!


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## Fishfur (Mar 4, 2012)

I know they are very pretty, but that type of dwarf gourami is quite delicate. All of the colour variants as well as the wild color type have a nasty habit of dying suddenly for no apparent reason, even though they may have looked just fine hours before. They need a lot of shade from floating plants, plenty of other plants to take cover and hide among. They don't want any water current. They are nothing like most other gouramis. A shy, quiet fish that does not fight back and is an easy target for other pushy fish.

After having attempted to keep them for awhile, my own opinion is that they are terrible community fish and I would not have one again. I'm not sure if they've been overbred or badly handled in shipment or something else, but whatever it is, they have a poor track record for survival. Some do survive, but many more do not. You cannot keep them with anything that will bully them because they are so very shy and stress can so easily kill them.

I kept mine, for awhile, with Celestial Pearl Danios, which are very small and pretty darn quiet, but they did poorly. I gave them plenty of floaters for shade, tons of plants, turned down the filter flow, did everything I could learn that was supposed to be good for them. Several died within days, and their replacements did not last longer. I returned the few that lived long enough to the store, at a loss, rather than have them die on me too.


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