Dwarf gourami male or female?

[heemskn]

I bought a second "peacefull community" dwarf gourami, before reading on here that in many cases males fight each other to the death. I thought that my first (reddish) gourami was male, but after comparing his fin to the one on the new one (blueish) I am not so sure. Please let me know what you think the sex of these two dwarfs is.

Also, I put the Q-tank next to the other one to let them get used to each other. After a lot of nipping at the glass in the first two days they are now ignoring each other most of the time. Any tips on how to best introduce the new one after his Q time is up?

Thanks,

 

[Lager]

They are both males. Give them enough room and plants and wood to break up lines of sight and they may do well together. Keep an eye on them. Females are drab grey things not often seen in stores.

 

[TheChards]

I keep four male Dwarf Gouramis together and generally they get on reasonably well. They might occasionally chase each other if one invades another's territory but I don't think they'd ever fight to the death over it.

As lager said, plenty of hiding places and distractions in the tank help to keep them from arguing with each other. And the females are generally very obvious as they are a dull gray colour (hence the fact that I bought four males!)

By the way - are those your photos? That's excellent photography if so...

 

[heemskn]

Thanks for clearing that up Lager and TheChards. I guess the two guys will just have to learn to get along. I have a small tank (14g) but it has some fake wood and real plants to distract them. Also I will move the molly out to make room.

And yes, those are my pictures. I use a Nikon D50, a little outdated by now, but still does the job.

 

[heemskn]

Update on the two male dwarfs at the top of the post:
After putting them in the same tank I had to keep the red fish in one of those floating breeder thingies for a couple of days, because he would not stop chasing the new blue fish. I had to keep the lid on because he even jumped out once to resume the fight. Now they are getting along OK in my 14 gal. The red one is the boss and owns the corner of the tank where they get fed, the blue one is a bit thick and keeps swimming over there and getting chased back to his own corner. I guess gouramis have a short memory because this repeats about every 5 minutes. No serious fighting though, and as soon as the light goes out at night they leave each other alone.

 

[jaxon808]

is my dwarf gourami male or female?

 

[heemskn]

This one is clearly male. I finally managed to find and buy some females and they have almost no color, and certainly no bright red.