Gold Gourami And Red Tail Starting To Be Aggressive

[mdsj]

Hi,
Up until fairly recently everything has been fine in our new 30l Biorb and all our fish have been quite happy and very healthy since we set it up in April.

However, about a fortnight ago, our Gold Gourami and Red Tail Shark have started to become quite aggressive with each other, both being just as bad as each other to be honest. They only seem to be fighting with each other and leave our other 3 danios alone. (We have 5 fish in total in the tank). From some research I've done, I believe both are male. Both are about 4in long.

We're quite concerned they are going to do each other some serious harm, so we would like some advice as to what might be going on, and a possible solution.

We keep a regular record of the water quality, and nothing seems out of the ordinary, though I'll admit we have missed a water change this week, and the filter is due for renewal.

My own personal guess is that they have outgrown the Biorb and have become territorial, which probably leaves us with 2 options - a bigger tank, or we'll have to give one up for adoption.

Any ideas, gratefully received.

Mike & Susan

 

[Jamepsss]

My own personal guess is that they have outgrown the Biorb and have become territorial, which probably leaves us with 2 options - a bigger tank, or we'll have to give one up for adoption.

Hi Mike, I think you've hit the nail on the head there. 30L is no-where near big enough for either of them long term.

 

[Wills]

Hi welcome to the forum!

Yeah a 30 liter biorb isnt really a suitable home for a 4 inch fish with a tank that size your should only be keeping fish like the zebra danios or other small schooling fish with small feature fish like sparkling gourami or badis fish.

Wills

 

[mdsj]

My own personal guess is that they have outgrown the Biorb and have become territorial, which probably leaves us with 2 options - a bigger tank, or we'll have to give one up for adoption.

Hi Mike, I think you've hit the nail on the head there. 30L is no-where near big enough for either of them long term.

Thanks for the reply. So just to clarify, the solution would be to get a bigger tank, so both of them could coexist quite happily, or are we going to have to consider splitting them up, regardless of the size of tank ?

If my calculations are right (based on 1cm of fish per 2 litres and having 30cm total at the moment) we're going to need at least a 60 litre tank minimum ?

 

[waterdrop]

Hi Mike and Susan and Welcome to our freshwater beginners section!

You're thoughts are headed in the right direction. Unfortunately you just didn't luck in to finding some great stocking advice initially like you would have on our forums here.

All the fish you are attempting to keep in the 30L/8G biorb will have a problem with that volume (and shape probably.) Each of the large ones, the gold G and the RTS are individually inappropriate. Each of these fish is way too big for this volume and each has its own aggression problem that makes it inappropriate. Gold gouramis are a color variant among the tricos (they are the same fish as the green Opaline and the Blue gourami if I'm remembering my details right.) They are very aggressive fish when housed with smaller fish (do better in tanks with fish bigger than them) and need perhaps a couple of females if they are male. Red tailed sharks (RTS) I am not an expert in but I believe I remember they get more aggressive as they get larger and older and that even in quite large tanks, like 70G you need to understand the right way to keep them (maybe Assaye or Davo or Wills will clarify this for us.) Anyway, in my opinion, quite obvious both these fish need to be rehomed unless you to something dramatic with a huge tank that includes them in the plan.

Unfortunately, the danios are also inappropriate, although less so. Their problem is that they need "a back yard to run in" (like a kid!) They are super high speed minnows (my inaccurate but favorite way to describe them) and need a loonng stretch of horizontal tank area for racing around in (a traditional USA 20G long or 29G high was sort of a starter size for danios in the old days.) They also need a minimum of 6 fish to lower their stress and be healthier.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Wills]

The rules regarding inch per gallon or centimeter pet liter are a bit rubbish in many respects. The basic guide most go by is inch per gallon but even that is flawed.

For example if you have an 8 gallon tank that does not mean you can have 1 8 inch fish or really even 2 4 inch fish because its just not big enough. A good guide to go on for size of fish per tank is to think 6 times the fishes length for the length of the tank and 2 x the length of the fish for the width of the tank. So in this case both the shark and gourami should grow to about 5 inches so the minimum for these would be a tank 30 inches long and 12 inches wide but then you have to consider the territorial nature of the shark which usually means that they are only recommended for tanks 4 foot long and around 55 gallons. Now that would mean if you added your current fish to a 55 gallon tank you could add plenty more but thats kind of the bench mark I would consider keeping these fish in.

As a bare minimum I would go for a tank like a Juwel 180 but ideally any of the 55 gallon tanks would be good - the Fluval Roma 240 is readily available and is about 65 gallons so again further options with regards what you want to keep.

Wills

 

[mdsj]

Thank you for all your replies.

We just went out and had a look round Urmston Aquatics and are totally bewildered at the different range of aquariums. We got some excellent assistance from one of the guys there, so we're now thinking about what we should do.

I've seen a lot of opinions on the Juwel and Aqua One range of aquariums, which is very useful, but I wondered if anyone has experience of the Interpet River.Reef aquariums ? What impressed me about what we saw was its filtration system. As a newbie, it seemed to knock socks of the Juwel and Aqua One's. Would that be a fair assessment ? I appreciate the River.Reef is only 94l rather than the 120+ that people have been recommending, but I'd still like to gather some opinions on it.

The other point which I wasn't aware of, is, if you buy a Juwel aquarium you are locked into buying their own lights, which isn't the case with other ranges which are considered "standard". Is that true ? One thing we would like to move away from is being locked into a proprietary system as with the Biorbs.

So far we've short listed a Lido 120, a Rio 125, an Aqua One 620 and the Interpet River.Reef R94. We've discounted the Fluval range owing to mixed reviews and several mentions of leaking problems. We've also discounted the new Biorb 105 due to its high cost.

As you can see, not quite the sizes mentioned. Issue we have is we're on a 2nd floor flat, so althought size isn't an issue for us, weight is, though thats a subject for another thread

 

[anon02]

Do yourself a favour and compare the prices you`ve seen with the prices on Aquariums Delivered (just Google it), I saved £100.00 and the tank and cabinet were delivered to my door (you have to take it in though !!! )

 

[Wills]

Of the tanks you mentioned I would go for the Aqua one its the one that is most mix and matchable between equipment but the Fluval Roma 125 is still a nice tank as well. Though yeah if it was me I would go for the Aqua One tank just because I think that they look the nicest.

The reef river ones are okay but I think limiting due to the built in filters. IMO its better to start with a glass box that is a nice piece of furniture that you can then add your equipment too like an external filter or strong internal unit.

I think in the above tanks the gourami and the shark could work, it might be tight but it could work okay. Other tank mates would need to be fast though and I would stick to things like harlequin rasboras and danios in large schools with your existing fish as the feature fish.

The red tailed shark, does it have red on all its fins or just the tail? This is the difference between two species the red tailed shark and the rainbow shark, the rainbow shark has red on all fins and is a little more peaceful than the red tailed shark.

Wills

 

[mdsj]

The Red Tail is only red on its tail, and has white tips to its fins, the rest of him is jet black. Have to say when he flares his fins (which I assume is posturing) he looks amazing. I'll have to see if he will stay still long enough for a picture !

We have a solid oak sideboard in our lounge, something my wife has owned for several years, so we are leaning towards a Rio 125 or maybe even a Rio 180 in a dark wood finish. Both would fit, and the sideboard is definitely capable of taking the weight (its quite a substantial piece of furniture). We'll probably put something underneath the tank, just to protect the wood top of the sideboard.

 

[Timmy_Bee]

i would go Rio 180 (because thats what i've got!)
Did you say you were off the ground floor? make sure the floor is solid enough. It should be for a 180L, but if your putting it on top of a full, heavy sideboard it might be worth checking!

On a side note, my red tailed shark gets on great with my gourami's in my Rio 180 (which i bought after realising my BiOrb was rubbish... Are you sure your not me?)

 

[Wills]

If you can get the 180 go for it You will love it in the long term, as you would be able to have more choice on what fish you want to keep with the gourami and shark

Wills