Sunfish afraid of gold gourami

I have a curious situation. My heavily planted 55-gal tank has housed one northern longear, three western dollars (two males & female), and a bantam sunfish for the past couple of years. Until recently, their only tankmates were some large Colombian tetras and some loaches. The sunfish essentially ignore both the tetras and the loaches. I decided that I wanted some color and activity in the upper half of the tank, so I bought a male gold gourami, Trichogaster trichopterus. I purposefully selected a large male because I thought it would have the best chance of working out with sunfish. Even so, I was prepared to remove the gourami if it started getting beaten up by the sunfish.

To my surprise, the gold gourami has become the dominant fish in the aquarium. Even the longear, who was the king of the tank, is chased by the gourami. This seems so out of character to me that I question what is going on. Could these sunfish be genetically wired to respond to a large area of gold/yellow as a sign of dominance? I expect research has been done along these lines, but I would be interested to hear any ideas or comments. Perhaps I just have a particulary aggressive gourami, but I am amazed that he hasn't been hammered by the longear and dollars.

my experience with gouramis is that they are semi aggressive. especially to each other.

That is strange. I have had gold gouramis in my tropical days and have noticed that the males are certainly aggressive towards other males, and semi-aggressive toward other females. Can you do a fish swap at your LFS? If so get a female. Males will have a more pointed dorsal fin, while females have a rounded tip to their dorsal. I had 2 females kept in a community and had zero signs of aggression.

In a Central American cichlid (midas I think), which is dimorphic in terms of coloration (gold or green), the golden can successfully bluff the green morph in disputes but if memory serves the gold morph is more susceptable to predation by visually oriented predators.


Any of the longear or dollar sunfish male?

If so to change the dynamic of interaction, then increase light levels and / or add a ripe female sunfish. If problem persists, then eat sunfish and get a male redspottted sunfish and blast him with light. He will fix the gouramies wagon! Or eat the gourami, they do in Asia.

I have a nasty-tempered paradise fish in a tank with a dollar and a blackspotted and he ruled that tank until the blackspotted got twice his size. He still bullies the dollar around (it's about the same size as the paradise fish) and the blackspotted mostly ignores him. They all seem to make similar gill flaring threats.

Sorry for late reply but Gold Gouramis get rather big and that kissing they make is actually the fish trying to figure out who is the Alpha fish, I saw at a walmart one time where a Kissing Gourami jumped tank in with the African Cichlids and was doing just fine.....so yeah I believe if its bigger (much like a big Oscar) it would do definately bully the smaller Sunfish.

Edited by wargreen, 12 December 2009 - 07:56 PM.

ewww a gourami doesn't even deserve to be in the same tank as your sunfish!

ewww a gourami doesn't even deserve to be in the same tank as your sunfish!

Ha ha Ha! Very true, I couldnt agree more putting tropicals with temperate natives makes one or the other very uncomfortable!

Something tells me the sunfish is new to the tank, just give some time he will start to fight back.