Will A Bigger Tank Stop My Gouramis From Fighting

[josh63762]

Hay all I have a male and female gold gourami that I want to breed in a 7 gal at the moment and the male is beating on the female pretty bad since I have been conditioning them for breeding with bloodworm if I moved them to a 26 gal would the fighting stop and maybe breeding commence?

 

[Fizzy77]

7g is definitely to small for them, changing to a 20g+ would probably help, make sure you have plants and hidey holes for them aswell, things like terracotta pots or coconut shells etc are great

 

[josh63762]

is this behaviour normal have u seen it ever will he kill the female

 

[attibones]

He'll kill her if you don't move them. Even if you do move them, there is a chance she won't survive. Your male sounds to be very aggressive. Put them in the larger tank with plenty of plants and caves to see what will happen. Gourami have a reputation for being aggressive, so for the fish who fit that description, this is normal behavior. Honey gourami are typically gentle, but gold gourami, such as the species you have, can be quite mean. They also get very large. I recently rehomed a male which was about six inches long. He came with a tank I purchased, otherwise I would have never had him. 

 

[DreamertK]

He'll definitely kill her. You could try switching with another male, but it might end up being the same. If you do, try putting the female in the 27g for two weeks, and then introducing a new male. However, they could still fight even in a big tank. As in he would chase her to the corners of the tank and she would be horrified of leaving a certain spot. You could as well try putting another female in so that not just the one gets harassed, though some females are just as aggressive as the males.

 

[josh63762]

I have read if u have 2 females it will split the males aggression I thing I will put them in the 27 gal and get another female?

I have read on many sites that the male can harass the female quite badly during breeding how much is Normal?

 

[DreamertK]

Mostly during breeding the male should only harass the female if she comes near his nesting area. If he's doing more than that or hasn't started building a nest, he probably isn't thinking of breeding. In your other thread, it's a good point that it might actually be a male who hasn't developed his secondary male characteristics yet. It happened to me, all the sudden my little girl turned into a big burly man gourami after I separated them for a few weeks (due to harassment). Another thing would is that, it takes longer than just a few days of worms to get them enough proteins to start developing eggs. It's a bit difficult to tell in gourami if the female just ate some peas/algea wafers or that her belly is full of eggs. Usually when the belly is full of eggs, she releases hormones into the water to stimulate the male fish to get him in the mood and start building the nest.