Aquarium Fish: Fish Viral Disease
Dwarf Gourami Iridovirus (DGIV)
The quality of the dwarf gouramis in the trade has steadily declined for years, with batches of fish showing significantly higher levels of mortality than 10 years ago. Historically, retailers and aquarists have blamed bacterial infections, such as fish tuberculosis (Mycobacterium marinum). In recent years, though, attention has focused on a virus known as dwarf gourami iridovirus or DGIV.
Dwarf gourami iridovirus is apparently specific to the dwarf gourami (Colisa lalia), including the various fancy varieties of the species, such as neon gouramis and sunset gouramis. Infected fish develop a variety of symptoms, including loss of color, decrease in activity and appetite, the appearance of sores and lesions on the body, abdominal swelling and finally death. This fish disease is highly contagious, completely untreatable and invariably fatal.
Dwarf gourami iridovirus is apparently very common. One recent study of fish exported from Singapore found that 22 percent of all dwarf gouramis carried the virus. Aquarists should never purchase dwarf gouramis from fish aquariums containing fish exhibiting symptoms consistent with the dwarf gourami iridovirus, and all new fish should be quarantined for at least six weeks prior to being placed in the main fish aquarium.
For most aquarists, my best advice is to keep the hardier alternatives to dwarf gouramis. The thick-lipped gourami (Colisa labiosa) and the banded gourami (Colisa fasciatus) are both similar in size, temperament and coloration and make excellent alternatives.
Neale Monks studied zoology at the University of Aberdeen in the north of Scotland and obtained his Ph.D. at the Natural History Museum in London. He's also been a marine biologist, a high school teacher, a university professor and a museum's exhibit designer. But his real love has always been tropical fish. His particular interest in brackish water fish culminated in his editing of the first encyclopaedic book on the topic, 'Brackish-Water Fishes', published by TFH in 2007. Neale regularly contributes to all the major English-language fishkeeping magazines, focusing especially on community tanks, biotopes, healthcare and water chemistry issues. After living in London and then for a while in Lincoln, Nebraska, Neale now lives in a quaint cottage in a pretty market town in Hertfordshire, England, where he divides his time between teaching and writing.