Sparkling Gourami "Croaking"?

[RachelG]

Probably unimportant backstory time! I bought this little sparkling gourami pretty much on a whim about two months ago. I know it was probably a bad idea to buy a fish on a whim like this, but so far, he's getting along well in the tank. The other fish don't bother the gourami, and the gourami seems inquisitive and happy, and eats well. Last year when I got my first tank I tried looking everywhere for these fish, and could not find them in any stores so when I spotted it in a tank among a bunch of rasboras I snatched it up. It was the only one they had because, according to the owner, it came into the shop as a stow-away with the rasboras that it was housed with then! Hopefully I can find more sparkling gouramis and set up a separate tank for them, but in the meantime it seems this little guy is doing just fine by itself. I love this little fish.
End of probably unimportant backstory time!

I was 100% sure that this fish was the Trichopsis Pumila species, until I realized that the tiny rattling noise that I keep hearing at night was coming from the fish. I looked up gourami croaking, and the noise I hear sounds EXACTLY like the noise that these "croaking gouramis" make in the first few seconds of this video:

Do sparkling gouramis make this same noise, or is my Trichopsis pumila "sparkling gourami" actually a juvenile Trichopsis schalleri "croaking gourami"?
And who is the gourami croaking to? Does he think my harlequin rasboras are his own species?

Also, what is the best way to sex these fish? I have read that the males have a solid dark stripe along the lateral line, and the females have a broken-up stripe. Mine has a pretty solid stripe and would be a male, if that is accurate. I've also read that the internal organs should be rounder in males when light shines through the, Anyone have photos to demonstrate this? Here are a few pictures of my gourami below. The first one has some light showing the shape of its insides. (It is only one inch long and very difficult to photograph!)

 

[meegosh]

Gourami's are labyrinth fish meaning that they gulp air and can use the air to breathe. Most likely what you are hearing is him/her sucking in air at the top of the tank, could sound like a croak though. I'm at work so couldn't watch the video. I had a dwarf years ago that would constantly make noise in the morning until I fed him.

 

[RachelG]

Gourami's are labyrinth fish meaning that they gulp air and can use the air to breathe. Most likely what you are hearing is him/her sucking in air at the top of the tank, could sound like a croak though. I'm at work so couldn't watch the video. I had a dwarf years ago that would constantly make noise in the morning until I fed him.

I don't think the rattling croak noise I hear is the fish slurping air. It sounds exactly like the croak that the fish in the video make. If you have ever heard the noise that those wooden croaking frog sculptures make when you rub the stick along their back, it sounds a lot like that. Before I realized it was the fish making the sound, I thought the noise was something rattling inside the filter.

 

[Canary bird]

Cool... I wish I could find croaking gouramis over here

 

[pip walters]

Just to confuse matters further, the normal croaking gourami is a third species - Trichopsis vittata.

How big is your fish? It looks more like schalleri to me.

pumila are tiny

My suppliers stock all three. I have vittata in stock now - a much bigger fish. Next week I should have pumila. Unfortunately, I live a little too far from you .

All three species croak - the genus Trichopsis is known as 'the croaking gouramis'. pumila is normally sold as the pygmy gourami, but sometimes the sparkling gourami and schalleri the three striped croaking gourami.

Adult males have longer anal and dorsal fins.

 

[RachelG]

Just to confuse matters further, the normal croaking gourami is a third species - Trichopsis vittata.

How big is your fish? It looks more like schalleri to me.

pumila are tiny

My suppliers stock all three. I have vittata in stock now - a much bigger fish. Next week I should have pumila. Unfortunately, I live a little too far from you .

All three species croak - the genus Trichopsis is known as 'the croaking gouramis'. pumila is normally sold as the pygmy gourami, but sometimes the sparkling gourami and schalleri the three striped croaking gourami.

Adult males have longer anal and dorsal fins.

My little gourami is slightly longer than one inch if you count his tail length. If he is schalleri, then he is a baby.
When I looked at some photos of scalleri and pumila, a lot f them had some kind of dark or red ring around the eye. Mine doesn't have that.

When I bought the fish, the store clerks couldn't even identify it! XD It's not a fish they normally get.