Help - Aggressive Fish!

[C & D]

Just put our new fish into the tank today and our 2 dalmation mollies are being very aggressive to our 2 gourami. does anyone knw of any reasons to this? Could it be the ammonia and nitrite levels in the tank making the fish aggressive because i have read tht mollies are usually timid fish as r the gourami. We have now seperated the mollies and they have turned on each other, surely there is something very strange about the behaviour of the molies? thnx 8)

 

[hollyp0p]

Just put our new fish into the tank today and our 2 dalmation mollies are being very aggressive to our 2 gourami. does anyone knw of any reasons to this? Could it be the ammonia and nitrite levels in the tank making the fish aggressive because i have read tht mollies are usually timid fish as r the gourami. We have now seperated the mollies and they have turned on each other, surely there is something very strange about the behaviour of the molies? thnx 8)

maybe ask about, maybe you have to keep more than 2 mollies together, I'm not sure at all though, never had mollies!

 

[rainbowcharmer]

That definitely is strange. My dalmation mollies are not at all aggressive, and from what I understand, gouramis are supposed to be semi-aggressive fish...

How big is the tank?

 

[C & D]

the tank is only 35l but apparently that's plenty of space for the 4 fish we have? yh it seems to be th gourami that r th most timid of the 2. strange. Could it be the levels of the water because nw evn in 'quarantine' the mollies r showing aggression towards each other! 8)

 

[CathyGo]

Mollies can be aggressive. The one's at my PetSmart frequently jump tank walls and go swimming with the tiger barbs with no problems. If anything they are more pushy than the barbs. Dwarf gouramis are NOT a semi-aggressive fish but mollies are. So are gold and blue gouramis. The dwarf gouramis need to be in a different tank than the mollies. Getting more mollies might help to even out the aggression in the existing mollies. The levels of the water have nothing to do with aggression.

Dwarf gouramis in my experience have been kind of delicate. If your water quality is an ongoing issue I would seriously consider taking them back to the store. I have a few customers that have mollies in with cichlids due to them terrorizing their community AND semi-aggressive fish. My 55 gal had 3 inch mollies in with 7 inch sharks when I picked it up. The mollies were bold enough to harass the sharks and the 8 inch pleco(spines!). One of them was a dalmatian and even though he was the mellowest of the bunch I still would classify all three as semi-aggressive.