rainbow hounding her female gourami

[dawguy]

My wife came home about 6 months ago with a three spot female gourami.A couple of weeks later she bought a rainbow at an auction, and pit it in the tank.I really don't think that they will ever hook up, but the rainbow chases her around the tank side by side.Is this the way Rainbows court sort to speak?
Lost for words on this.
Dawguy
(blush)

[Lady Hobbs]

Bows are social fish. Why not get yours some friends of the same species? He'll soon leave the gourami alone.

[rich311k]

My bows treat my gourami as almost one of the school. I think it is because they have a very similar body shape.

[Somethings Fishy]

Rainbows shouldn't be kept as a solo fish. They are an active surface shoaling fish. Your rainbow is simply trying to hang around the only other fish that is inhabiting what it sees as it's area of the tank for company. What size is your tank & what type of rainbow do you have?
Rainbows should be kept as a shoal of at least 5 or 6 fish with a ratio of 2-4 females for every male kept. Kept this way they will feel more confident & display thier natural behaviour as well as have better colors. A heavily planted tank will make them even happier.
Gouramis should also be kept as pairs, not solo fish. I don't think that gouramis should be kept in the same tank as rainbows. All the activity from the rainbows will make your gourami nervous as they like it nice & quite.

Ideally you would pick one or the other but if you want to have both fish in the same tank get more rainbows (if your tank is big enough) & they will concentrate on each other & mostly leave the gourami alone. Also get another gourami. It will be harder for you to find a compatible gourami & they might fight if they aren't compatible. Gouramis should ideally be bought as compatible pairs to.

[VoidParadigm]

IMO get more bows, but not more gouramis. 3-Spot temperments vary greatly. Finding "a compatible gourami" would be as hard as keeping tetras in predatory fish tanks. Not impossible, but certainly not worth the risk.

[dawguy]

They like to do their dance all day she doesn't seem to get mad.The couple keep beside each other alot and when they are seperated the gourami follows the bow. Weird but they do this all day.
(blush)

Dawguy

[terrapin24h]

Gouramis should ideally be bought as compatible pairs to.
Please cite your source for info. Gourami are anabantoids, and like their cousins the betas tend to be very aggressive towards one another(m-m or m-f), and even many fish that are also top-dwellers. Even when breeding, once the eggs are laid it's generally recommended to remove the female asap lest the male pound her(and any fish that get too close to the bubble nest) to death. There are some gourami that are easier to cohabit than others(i know people who have had good success with dwarfs, added at the same time and of the same size) but the medium gourami are very hard to get along. I have a blue 3 spot that will have *no* gourami company at all, though he tolerates his tank mates. But every fish in the tank knows(has been taught) that he's the boss. I have also seen in a few LFS where they have to spread out their gourami across 2 or 3 tanks to keep fighting down. As they age it gets worse. I also have a gold color morph of the 3 spot, and he is a died in the wool killer. It doesn't matter what you put with him--if it swims it dies. He lives in my 10 at work with 2 snails that he routinely tries to kill, if it weren't for those darn shells! Medium sized gouramis are far more violent than tolerant, and should be kept the sole gourami in all but the largest of tanks.

Rainbows of course are a schooling fish, and as such need groups. My 6 left my blue 3 spot gourami totally alone. They picked on everything else though. My rainbows(spledida) did more of a "twirly corkscrew" kind of motion. Males and females would pair off and do this "mock spawning" for hours at night. Sometimes 1 m and 2 female would do it. There generally wasn't any chasing during this time. They did chase each other as part of what appeared as play, however.

--chris

[VoidParadigm]

Agree heavily with terrapin24h. 3-spots are ridiculously hard to keep together.

My own experience:
My blue, a very nice community fish who never even looked the wrong way at another fish, was killed by his mate. It took me two months of easing to get the female to accept living with anything else in the tank, and now she won't accept anything more than cories and a goldfish too big for her to pick on.

As for the bows, I still suggest getting at the very least 2-3 more. What size is your tank anyways?

[Oscarwild]

Source: An Illustrated Encyclopedia Of Aquarium Fish by Gina Sanford, The Complete Book Of The Freshwater Aquarium by Vincent B. Hargreaves, The Complete Encyclopedia Of Tropical Fish by Esther Verhoef-Verhallen, Totally Aquarium Fish by David Goodwin as well as numerous other books, web articles & profiles.

Maybe I should clarify. To get a compatible pair, gouramis should be bought together after much study of the available fish in the dealers tank. Looking for the usual fish that are hanging out together all the time as being the most likely to be a compatible pair, although hanging out together by no means garantees a compatible pair. When I say kept together I mean for breeding purposes. I do not advocate that the pair should ever be kept together after mating has tanken place. Whichever one is not looking after the nest should be removed to another tank until such time as the fry have been removed and the remaining beta has had sufficient time to recover.

I hope that makes my views clearer for anyone that had thier doubts.