Blue gourami issues...

[Puriti]

Okay I have two questions

1. Are there 2 kinds of Blue Gourami because I saw a video in my marine class where there was a darker blue colored gourami with no spots that they classified as "blue gourami" i know that mine's a 3 spotted gourami (don't really get that cuz...there's like 4 spots last time I looked) so I was just curious

2. My blue gourami, Reef, doesn't really..eat.... It's very rare for me to witness him eat at all, and even more that he comes to the surface to eat. He just lazes around the bottom of the tank (no sign of sickness or stress) and he watches food just...float by his face. He does move around to different levels of the tank but usually either stays in the middle or the bottom or goes into the castle cave. I do see him eat though and I'm happy when I do see it but... i can't find anything physically wrong with him though. He doesn't have sticky fins, there's nothing on the outside that shows anything, I haven't found any behavior that would suggest really internal problems... sooooo I don't really know what to make of him :?

 

[TankGirl]

1. Sometimes powder blue dwarf gouramis are called "blue gouramis" but I don't know if this is what you saw.

2. As you suspect, this is not normal behavior for a gourami, and I would say these are signs of stress. It may have something to do with sharing this tank with two other gouramis that are all going to be competing for upper strata territory. Assuming there is some kind of plant cover that reaches all the way to the top of the tank to give each gourami a place of his own, then it might be time to remove this fish to his own tank, at least for observation.

This is all assuming tank parameters are in good shape.

 

[Puriti]

I dunno, my dwarf gouramis don't really bother him, neither do my other fish, infact they all kinda ignore him... He's actually very brightly colored, not dull, not dark, not showing stripes or anything. He's just.... being blah. The only agression I've seen between my gouramis is if Tang gets in Zipper's way and they're both dwarf gouramis but generally they themselves hang around together without an issue except for maybe once in a blue moon if Zipper's in a bad mood. I dunno if it's stress or not but you might be right :?

No, it wasn't a powdered dwarf....it looked like a blue gourami in shape,it was just different colored....maybe opaline?

 

[TankGirl]

Trichogaster trichopterus (blue gourami) is also known by: three spot gourami, opaline gourami, and even silver gourami. Common names are so frustrating!

 

[Puriti]

X.x why must there be so manyyyyyy .....lol It must've been opaline then cuz it was darker and didn't have the spots. I doubt it was a silver.

I am happy to say that Reef ate today. He was having trouble with the flakes so i put in some blood worms and he ate those....weird though, I took a paper towel and scrubed the algae off and it was brown ( diatums ????) and then he started like...swimming where i scrubbed and was making funny mouth motions like he was breathing heavy...was he eating the floating stuff? o.o

 

[Toirtis]

Trichogaster trichopterus (blue gourami) is also known by: three spot gourami, opaline gourami, and even silver gourami. Common names are so frustrating!

Yes, and each is somewhat different in appearance, having been bred for colour pattern, but still all the same species.

 

[malkore]

the opaline gourami's I used to keep weren't very blue at all. More like a touch of blue in the silver that was most of his coloration...
just like this:

 

[Puriti]

No...it was darker than that. o.o my opaline gourami wasn't that bright that I remember....I dunno it was like a navy blue/tealish color ._.

 

[RoK]

Did it look like the one in my avatar, or not really?

 

[Puriti]

No it didn't have the designs like that but it was about that color, just a little lighter o.o

 

[Puriti]

I think it was this one...So maybe it was a 3 spot just darker...

 

[RoK]

That's a female blue gourami. The 3-spots are being selectively bred so much nowadays that there are many different shades of blue or whatever color they can make them have.