pearl gourami breeding HELP

hows it going have a pair off pearl gouramis in my community tank and also a female blue gourami in the last day or so i have noticed that the two females look bigger and i think they could be pregnant i have read this

www.aquaticcommunity.com/gourami/breedingpearl.php

and it says that the male will build the nest and you need to provide him with plants or some other construction suitable for anchoring the nest. A small plastic lid floating on the surface will actually work great, since the male will appreciate the shelter and build his nest underneath.

since yesterday i have put a very big busy fake plant floating on the surface with also a big plastic lid

i just wanna know will he build the nest now or not and wat to do if he does and the two females lay eggs

thanks sean

if you want them to breed you should remove them to a small tank on there own,
just the pearl gouramis!
tryin to breed them in a community tank just wont work,

if you have an spare tank or can get your hands on one,just set it up using your community tank water and some media from your filter,(for a quick set up)

if you follow what it says in the link you should be ok, it covers pretty much everything,

good luck.
steve..

Breed them if you get a chance.....and adorn the forum with some super Male-in-breeding-colour photos.

Breeding in a community tank is not a great idea for a number of reasons.
If you don't have a separate tank, then maybe make a division.

You'd need the water to be towards the 80F mark, quite soft, lowish pH and with a low conductivity....now, don't buy a conductivity meter: just make sure the water is clean and has been maintained with regular water changes.

The water level should be about 8 inches deep. Although you will see aggression in the females, a breeding male can be quite pushing on a female. So, if you have only one female then make sure she is well conditioned on blood-worm etc.

Do not have much water movement.

Remove females after breeding.....eggs hatch in a day to day and a half to 2 days. Remove male after he starts to lose interest....and in any case after about 4 days.

ian

yeah i dont think it will work cause have not got my other tank up and running ah think ill just leave wat i have put in and see wat happens ya never know could work ha really need to get my other tank down from dublin and get it running as a breeding tank feck it anyway :L

have some floatings bits anyway, and see what happens.

yeah ian see wat happpens mate ha

So how did it go with the breeding?

I havea pare too. Female got very big and male started to display amazing colors, started to go after the female all the time. It's been like this for couple weeks now, so I borowed one of them small tanks.. couldn't get anything biger than that.
Filled with big tanks water, placed biggest moss ball, couple disposable glasses joined together (to make hiding places). Have heater and one of those buble filters. Trying to set temperature up to 25 as it dropped a bit during the night.. have a lid and a plant floating. Introduced female hour prior to male. Anything else I should try?

Use the same techniques for these as for breeding siamese fighting fish.

The water temp should be increased as in the case of siamese fighters...... increase to 80 degree F ( 27 C). (any lower is no good and will also decrease chance of survival of fry)

Use mature but clean water. Ideally it should be the same as for discus fish.
If you have mature enough water, then there will be some small living food within that water that will be beneficial to the smaller fry.

I would have peat in the tank.
You would only need a small bubble filter as the surface should not be agitated.

Condition the pair on good quality food....dried and frozen. You may find that separating the pair for a week (and not allowing the male to see any other fish) may help a stubborn pair.

The breeding tank can be quite small (eg a 24x12x12 inch), but you only need about 5 or 6 inches of water depth.
Have a SELECTION of floating plants and places for the female to hide.

Cover the tank with cling film.....you need a humidity atmosphere above the water and the air should be close to the temperature of the water.

If the male is shy about building a nest, then introduce a yellowish plastic piece of floating plastic or some bubble wrap: that may (and I say 'may') tempt him to get building.

You could find that placing the female behind a glass partition will tempt a lazy male to build a nest and then let them together after he has built a nest.

Fry take a 1 to 2 days to hatch; leave the male with the young for another 3 to 4 days.
Then start looking after the babies.

So....basically identical to breeding siamese fighting fish.

ian

I forgot to mention one thing (or maybe a good few things).....don't make rapid water quality changes with any gourami: pearl gourami are pretty tough and forgiving fish, but their ideal water conditions are 'discus' or 'cardinal tetra' quality water (as is the expected water for siamese fighting fish).

I happen to keep all my gourami tanks (and siamese fighting fish tanks) under more stringent control than I give to discus tanks.....and the results are worth it !!

ian

the aquarium is very small. I used couple disposable cups joined together to make a tunnel and used a cup from the sour cream maybe aswell for hiding. none of them are actually hiding there. they are feeding alright. water is slightly foggy this morning.. been a while sinse I looked after aquarium so tiny

for the water changes, probably I'll take 10-20% out and top it up from my main tank.. temperature is arround 27C now.

I think male is doing the same as in the main tank.. trying to chase female.. not too much space for it
male is not building any nest for sure.. not too sure what to use to separate them anyway. there are plenty of bubles arround the lid.. how long would it takes for him do you think?

You could separate the female in a plastic floating breeding trap....it may only need a day or two (but I can't tell how big the fish are...but I can see they are not full grown yet).

The water level should be lowered......5 to 7 inches deep.

Make sure that there is no agitation of the surface (so maybe have piece of plastic floating to divide off an area of no agitation from the filter (I switch off the filters when breeding anabantids and I use resins instead to get rid of ammonia etc). Have plants floating on the surface.

The male will get the most fantastic red throat (that puts many fish to shame for colour).

In an ideal world, the tank looks a little small for the normal living of pearl gouramis as the male can be overly aggressive towards females.....that becomes a real problem with full sized pearl gouramis.
But, having said that, 2 of our tanks having 1 or 2 pearl gouramis are 60 litres; the other pearl gourami tanks are much bigger (and needs to be as the ones in with the pacus are extremely aggressive and able to put large Geophagus on their backs!! but are soon brought into line by discus....as is the funny world of fish psychology )

Be patient, and feed blood worm by hand.....you could be rewarded with these superb fish.

ian

as for the water level, lowered it to ~8inches. can't go any lower as the filter will be sticking out and filter will not be functioning, but helped with adjutation. it's more calm now on the surface, added another lid and couple more plants. changed arround 25% of water with the main tank water as felt strange smell of the water.

I only have frozen white shrimp at the moment, will get some bloodworm monday.

other thing, I'm going for holiday in 1.5weeks, for 2 weeks, so bad timing always is. do you think I should maybe put the pair back with the others if they won't breed before that?

if the fish is not fully grown, do you think its going to be a problem? it's arround 3-4"
I'll try to add some pictures, mostly male :

I wouldn't bother putting them to breed if you're away....as the fry hatch pretty quick and will need food.

As for size...these will breed at a small size; the size you state is good for breeding if the male is showing colours and the female is interested.

ian

I actually was surprised to see colors like that on pearls when I got them, but if they will I will try at least remove the parents from the small tank, then might get someone to come to feed them. is it everyday they need it? thats a topic on it's own.

smitas5 wrote:

I actually was surprised to see colors like that on pearls when I got them, but if they will I will try at least remove the parents from the small tank, then might get someone to come to feed them. is it everyday they need it? thats a topic on it's own.

I rate pearl gouramis very highly when it comes to beauty.

Your male is a rather super specimen....wait to see him in full breeding colours (you'd probably ask yourself why you would want discus ).

These are quite greedy but shouldn't be over fed as adults...the medium to larger specimens do not need feeding daily.
But if you have fry, then the fry will need loads of small feedings.

ian

well if he is not in full breading colors, then maybe I ruched a bit?
Does it work that way that if necessary conditions are not met, pair will wait?

sorry, seems like I have a question after every comment you make
hope other members will find it useful

sorry for the mistakes also

His colours are well poised for breeding.....I mean when he is actually in the process of spawning that suddenly you'll think you have marine fish.

I'm not too sure how many people keep these on the forum (well....that is really poor english from me).

ian

Sinse this forum is full of people, using slang and shortened words like u for you and ect.
Also the mistypes so I'm not too bothered to get it perfect
Sorry if my mistakes anoy you will try to do better

Water smell still worries me though

can I remove the filter altogether and change water 1-2 time a day? I believe they get ogygen from the air like we do.. no need for aeration?

also cal lead be bad for aquarium?

i changed a bit of water twice today, but it's still very foggy.

You're not making many mistakes at all......asking questions is not a mistake.

Even though they are 'air-breathers' they still need filtration even if they do not need the 'aeration' themselves.

In a breeding tank, if you remove the filtration, then add peat and ammonia removing resin on the floor.
You need to keep ammonia levels to a minimum.

If you get a nitrite spike then that can cause permanent damage to the gills (if it doesn't kill the fish)...and the last thing you want with these is to have damaged gills.

On that subject, when you finally get the babies hatched you use the cling-film over the tank to keep high humidity above the water. If you don't during the first few weeks of the young's lives then they will not properly develop their special breathing apparatus.

On the english.....'text speak' is getting everywhere. Sometimes it is easy to read, but if it is thrown into one big sentence without punctuation then it become impossible to understand any of that 'text speak'..... if u get wot im talkin bout m8

I'll keep filtering.. it makes very small adjutation.

No sign of nest beeing built anyway.. he is just his fishy thing (eat, poo, eat, poo)

smitas5 wrote:

Sinse this forum is full of people, using slang and shortened words like u for you and ect.
Also the mistypes so I'm not too bothered to get it perfect
Sorry if my mistakes anoy you will try to do better

Water smell still worries me though

Let's see how well we do on a Website in your Country, can't imagine how wonderfully we'd be speaking your native Tongue.

Kev.

In 10years you shouldn't have difficultys speaking any European language.. well maybe the Hungarian

I learned bad language much quicker than that

Kev.

I must say that I have had no problems reading and understanding many of our non-native english speakers on the forum......the english is often better than our native speakers.

I'm half Italian, and I can't speak a word of what should be my native language.

ian

I'm sure irish people could comment on that gaeilge language is somewhat unpopular..
I think very much like in Australia

So no problem with missinterpretation then..

You prompted me to write a mini-article on breeding nest-building gouramis such as these....

www.irishfishkeepers.com/index.php/fforu...ders-overview#104177

all the questions rolled into a single posting

ian

Great, thanks. You're a star

well well this morning I found buble nest done under the lid..
male keeps forcing her to come under the nest, but when they do, they stare at it for a minute and then female goes away..
that looks like inexperience thing..?

noticed females tale is a bit damaged.. hope this will heal

still no eggs.. .female still hiding, there are two nests..