New Female Dwarf Gourami Has No Pointy Bits

[deanrar]

Hi, i know this may sound silly (as i dont know what they are called ) but my female has no pointy bits just stumps and i was wondering if they just dont have fully fledged things or could they have been eaten in knocked of before i got her.

 

[sylvia]

Do you mean the two thread-like fins that normaly hang just under the gills? If so, these were probably nipped off and should grow back if she doesn't become infected (keep up with water changes). They are actually modified ventral fins and have taste cells so gouramies can actually feel around in muddy waters (in the wild) and taste what they are touching at the same time! Most people call them 'feelers'.

 

[deanrar]

thanks its good to know they can grow back as I enjoy watching my male flicking things (mainly her) with them

 

[deanrar]

Another question off topic but still partly about the gourami.

I have a pair of dwarf gourami and a pair of dalmation mollies (both one male one female).

What is more important to keep the females un-stressed get an extra 1 or 2 female mollies or gourami?

 

[deanrar]

Oh yeh and this only really applies if the tank is not overstocked with:
have a 34 Gallon tank
tank mates are 3 congo tetra (2 inch),
2 dalmation mollies (1 inch and 1.5 inch),
2 panda cory cats (about 2cm),
2 peppered cory cats (1 inch),
2 dwarf gourami (1.5 inch),
1 kuhli loach (2 inch) and
8 little algae shrimp (1 or 2 cm),
i do at least 30% water changes every week,
feed erveryday with algae wafer, flake or dried tubifex and have recently tried frozen blood worm.

 

[sylvia]

You're not overstocked

The dwarfs are the ones you should be most worried about IMO. Dwarfs can die if stressed too much and the males are more aggressive than molly males. Also, you have less time to fix the dwarf problem. If you don't add the extra female soon, the two will resort to aggression when she is added later because they'll have established the tank as their own and will view her as an 'intruder'. With the mollies, the extra female can go in whenever as long as she is the same size as the existing female.

The problem with mollies is from the male wanting to mate all the time rather than from the male actually bullying the girl. Also, female mollies are larger than males and really can hold their own I'd say, also, that the 2:1 ratio so often emphasized with livebearers is less of an issue with mollies than it is with, say, guppies (which do best at 3:1 in fact!) or platies, swords etc.