What would make a gourami change colour?

[Fishies86]

My three spot gourami seems to have changed colour overnight. Hes usually pale on his "chin", but now hes got stripes there. The stripes he had before are much darker and the back half of his body has merged into one colour rather than blue blotches on the pale blue base colour he had before.

He seems fine other than this colour change, but I'm worried it means somethings wrong :/

 

[corinne118s]

Not an expert but I'm pretty sure the darker/more vibrant the colors the better. Fish get pale sometimes pale blotches when they are stressed or sick. Maybe hrs just feeling better?

 

[randy86]

It could be a simeple dull female. A lot if times breeders feed the fish hormones to make them.appear in the fish store that they are vibrant males. But also.too some graumiea go through a maturing stage "puberty" if you will where their colors dull.out and then come back more vibrant than ever but this stage should only last about 2 or so weeks. Hopefully its just a stage

 

[Fishies86]

Not an expert but I'm pretty sure the darker/more vibrant the colors the better. Fish get pale sometimes pale blotches when they are stressed or sick. Maybe hrs just feeling better?

That would make sense actually. Hes in a tank that's too small for him (rescued from even smaller tank) and had been sharing it with tetras corys and guppies for quite a while now. We r in the process of changing our stocking to fish that are more suited to the tank, so we rehomed the other fish. So now hes got the tank to himself til we rehome him. We've noticed that he's much more confidant now, so maybe he is just feeling better

 

[Fishies86]

It could be a simeple dull female. A lot if times breeders feed the fish hormones to make them.appear in the fish store that they are vibrant males. But also.too some graumiea go through a maturing stage "puberty" if you will where their colors dull.out and then come back more vibrant than ever but this stage should only last about 2 or so weeks. Hopefully its just a stage

He's definitely a male we've had him for about 6 months now and he's always been the same colour. He's making bubble nests too