Setup for Samurai Gourami

Hi
These guys have been on my bucket list for a while. Tbh I have no real experience with gourami. I bought 6 and thought I’d gif 2F 4M but seems one of my males might be a sleeper female so potentially 3 pairs. They are Anout 2.5-3cm and I’ve put them in a 140 ltr established tank with a bit of plant cover as well as hardscape and leaf litter. Tankmates at this stage are a handful of Green neon tetras and some young apisto growing out but they will soon be moving. Current PH is about 6.4 with just my rain tank water and the natural buffers. Should I be looking to lower PH using peat moss etc?
Any other way no I should know regarding their care?
They seem pretty chill, laidback, and settled in but a few people have suggested they become axe murders when older.
Any info Gladly received.
Cheers

You can get some ideas from the link here but you don't have to follow exactly the water pH unless you bought wild caught fish.

I have not kept this species (never seen it locally) but I did have success with its close relative Sphaerichthys osphromenoides. And the habitats are basically identical with respect to dim light, very soft and acidic water, and quiet water. Floating plants would to me be essential to replicate the thick vegetation cover to the habitat waters, and also serve as water purifiers. Dried leaves litter the substrate, so look for those (oak work extremely well, pretty much any hardwood deciduous tree leaves.

These were the tanks I had my spawning group of Chocolates in, along with a group of pygmy sparkling gourami, and a shoal of Trigonostigma hengeli or T. espei. And a group of dwarf chain loaches. First photo is the 70g, second and third the 33g.

I’ve never heard of samurai gourami before, but they are beautiful! Good luck with them.

Lajos_Detari said:

You can get some ideas from the link here but you don't have to follow exactly the water pH unless you bought wild caught fish.

Click to expand...

Thanks for these links. Very helpful.
I’m not sure if these are wildcaught.
I suspect they are not given the price and uniformity of size, and the fact the market is very small here and so is choice and availability of fish.
Thanks.

Byron said:

I have not kept this species (never seen it locally) but I did have success with its close relative Sphaerichthys osphromenoides. And the habitats are basically identical with respect to dim light, very soft and acidic water, and quiet water. Floating plants would to me be essential to replicate the thick vegetation cover to the habitat waters, and also serve as water purifiers. Dried leaves litter the substrate, so look for those (oak work extremely well, pretty much any hardwood deciduous tree leaves.

These were the tanks I had my spawning group of Chocolates in, along with a group of pygmy sparkling gourami, and a shoal of Trigonostigma hengeli or T. espei. And a group of dwarf chain loaches. First photo is the 70g, second and third the 33g.

Click to expand...

Thanks for info and your tanks look brilliant. Do you know the sort of PH parameters you are running?

Here my set up so far. 35g and was an established growout tank for apistos- still a few in there. I’ll add to it slowly so no big environmental changes. I have a huge magnolia Tree across the road with masses of dried leaves under it so will add more and some wood. I will also take out internal filters and go with sponge to help keep things still.

Firenzenz said:

Thanks for info and your tanks look brilliant. Do you know the sort of PH parameters you are running?

Here my set up so far. 35g and was an established growout tank for apistos- still a few in there. I’ll add to it slowly so no big environmental changes. I have a huge magnolia Tree across the road with masses of dried leaves under it so will add more and some wood. I will also take out internal filters and go with sponge to help keep things still.

Click to expand...

That ;looks good, well suited to these fish. My tap water is zero GH and KH (GH might be around 7 ppm which is less than half of 1 dH), and the pH naturally (in the reservoirs) is below 5. Unfortunately they began increasing the pH in 2001 (using soda ash which had no effect on GH/KH and left the pH around 7) but in the established tanks the pH remained low, I could not measure below 5 so for all I know it may have been in the 4's. I had a fish room of primarily wild caught fish, and they seemed to thrive. Provided one has soft and very soft water fish, their habitats are much the same parameters.

Geoffrey said:

I’ve never heard of samurai gourami before, but they are beautiful! Good luck with them.

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They are just one of the species of chocolate gourami.

For the technically-minded...

There are now four recognized distinct species within the genus Sphaerichthys, the most common being the "Chocolate Gourami," S. osphromenoides. This species is nearly identical to Sphaerichthys selatanensis [Vierke 1979] which was originally considered a sub-species; Roberts (1989) established the latter as a distinct species, confirmed by Kottelat et al. (1993). S. osphromenoides has a third vertical creamy-white band running from just before the dorsal fin at the top to just behind the ventral fins at the bottom; this is not present on S. selatanensis.

The other two species in the genus are less commonly seen, being S. acrostoma and S. vaillanti.

A possible fifth species is uncertain. Osphromenus malayanus. Roberts (1989) considered this species to possibly be valid as Sphaerichthys malayanus (Duncker 1904). Kottelat (2013) says it is uncertain but more likely a synonym of Sphaerichthys osphromenoides Canestrini 1860. This latter placement is currently the one accepted. So that leaves four distinct species in the genus. The genus name derives from the Greek for a conglobate or spheric fish.