Hi,
We have an established tank, we had a couple of guppies and a blue gourami in there and danio for months. The blue gourami was awesome, totally peaceful, never once showed any indication of aggression.
Then one of the guppies started breathing very heavily, not gasping at the surface, just in the middle breathing heavy. The water quality is normal and the guppy looked healthy - no gill or surface abnormalities - so I had a hard time knowing what was wrong with him. The guppy died in a couple of days.
That very night the blue gourami started hunting - not just nipping, but aggressively chasing down and biting - the other (blue) guppy. The tank has nice hiding places and plants, so the guppy was able to hide out some, but it's a timid guppy in the first place and so was really shaking and terrified. I say the gourami was "hunting" the guppy because it would search around in places it had seen the guppy hide before, looking for it, trying to squeeze into cracks in the fake coral and searching in plants.
We took the guppy out to a hospital tank for a bit to calm him down and decide what to do. Since this happened immediately after the first guppy died, I had the idea of getting another little guppy to pair with the blue one to see if that would deter the gourami some. While the guppies got along and stayed together, when I added them both into the main tank after several days, the gourami immediately went after the guppy again, as well as lunging after any of the other fish.
At that point, we decided to take the gourami to a pet store, sadly since we really liked him & the way he behaved and swam with his extremely precise movements.
But I'm stumped as to what caused his instantaneous transformation from ultra-cool and peaceful to rabidly aggresive hunter overnight - any ideas?
We have an established tank, we had a couple of guppies and a blue gourami in there and danio for months. The blue gourami was awesome, totally peaceful, never once showed any indication of aggression.
Then one of the guppies started breathing very heavily, not gasping at the surface, just in the middle breathing heavy. The water quality is normal and the guppy looked healthy - no gill or surface abnormalities - so I had a hard time knowing what was wrong with him. The guppy died in a couple of days.
That very night the blue gourami started hunting - not just nipping, but aggressively chasing down and biting - the other (blue) guppy. The tank has nice hiding places and plants, so the guppy was able to hide out some, but it's a timid guppy in the first place and so was really shaking and terrified. I say the gourami was "hunting" the guppy because it would search around in places it had seen the guppy hide before, looking for it, trying to squeeze into cracks in the fake coral and searching in plants.
We took the guppy out to a hospital tank for a bit to calm him down and decide what to do. Since this happened immediately after the first guppy died, I had the idea of getting another little guppy to pair with the blue one to see if that would deter the gourami some. While the guppies got along and stayed together, when I added them both into the main tank after several days, the gourami immediately went after the guppy again, as well as lunging after any of the other fish.
At that point, we decided to take the gourami to a pet store, sadly since we really liked him & the way he behaved and swam with his extremely precise movements.
But I'm stumped as to what caused his instantaneous transformation from ultra-cool and peaceful to rabidly aggresive hunter overnight - any ideas?
