What to do about my bully?

[u2_Crazy]

I have a Blue Gourami who is a bully. I bought him along with a red Gourami a few months ago and he has grown to be a beautiful fish. The red gourami has not grown as much and gets chased to the point where she is always hiding now. This Gourami has now started chasing around my Tiger Barbs and has now caused one of the smaller Albino Barbs to hide in the inch of water above my CO2 chamber. Here is what I have, I know it's overstocked but there is plenty of swimming room and the Nitrates are perfect, this is a planted tank.

29gal.
12 Tiger Barbs (7 normal, 1.5inch)(5 Albino 1inch)
2 Gouramis (1 Red 2 inch)(1 Blue 2.5 - 3 inch)
4 Cories (1-2inches)
2 Clown Plecos (2 inches)

 

[7Enigma]

Well it depends on how drastic you want to get. You can always get a tank divider if it becomes worse, but I don't recommend this. It takes up WAY to much space in the tank and you are already pushing the stocked limit for your tank size. I had a tiger barb that was extremely aggressive in my tank towards other fish (namely cory catfish). After one had been eaten alive by this tiger I had to do something to stop it. I had purchased a breeder cage (floats at the surface for new fry), and put my tiger in there for 10-12 days by himself. It was acrylic so he could see all the other fish (and he tried to fight them ), but it gave the other fish a rest from the constant tormenting.

When I finally put him back in the tank surprisingly he was much better behaved (still not perfect, but a marked improvement). I believe that the isolation allowed the other fish to establish their territories and become more confident and healthy (I slightly underfed the barb in the breeder cage and slightly overfed the rest of the tank hoping I could get a size difference which might make the offending tiger less likely to pick on the others). I don't know if this will work for you but its an option.

 

[ntswift]

You could also try moving your decorations around to help them establish new territories. Every other time I do a water change I change my tank around to even things out a bit. Good luck!

 

[Musket]

My dad had a black skirt tetra that was picking on a 4" angel. He moved the tetra to a 1 gallon tank for 3 days. Felt bad about it and put him back in the big tank, he was much better behaved after that. Schooled right back up with his buddies, but cut way down on the biting.