Stressed Pearl Gourami

[nzgirl]

Hi there, our female Pearl gourami spends most of her time facing the corner of the tank kind of rocking fowards & back. She's in a 65L planted tank with 1 male betta splenden, who doesn't bother with her. We have been treating the tank with Melafix 5 days now, as she had some scars on one side, couldn't quite tell if they were open wounds or not. She's not very interested in eating, especially if I'm watching :help: She's was doing this in another tank, which had a male pearl gourami and guppies/tetras, and we thought we'd move her as the male would keep bumping her. But she still acts this way in new tank which she's been in over 1 month now. Time to get some advice please

[jaysee]

IME it's normal for the male gourami to be very controling of his female at first.

Pearls are timid fish, and if you don't have adequate plant cover, they will be stressed out. Do you have any plants that reach the surface? Do you have any floating plants? They like to have areas of dense plants for cover.

[nzgirl]

Thanks Jaysee, yes we do have lots of plant cover and some have grown right to the surface, but she seems to still stay in the top corner, bumping her mouth into it.

We've had her since March & she was happiest in our angel tank with another female (whom we bought thinking it was a male). We really wanted a male, so made arrangements to return the 2nd female & get a male with local fish store, but they didn't have one until much later.

I moved her to a hospital tank to treat her scars; & when we got the male moved her into our 108L community tank. That's when I noticed her odd behaviour & loss of colour, I moved her back to hospital tank as thought male might be adding to her stress, & the scars just don't go away, even after a week of melafix. It's just no quality of life for her at moment & don't know what else to do.