hi everyone I haven't checked out my gouramis for a while so this is a good
time and while I'm at it I may as well provide some pros and cons about keeping
gouramis for any beginning tropical fish hobbyists out there hear all my adult
and older juvenile gouramis and this is not the company they keep
I house my males and females and separate tubs the color forms in here
include the blue opaline the golden and the lavender three spot
I haven't bred them for a while so they just been existing as pets with respect
to the individual fish I've covered these numerous times in past videos so I
won't go into detail now I've neither acquired anything new nor lost any with
the exception that I retrieved two who juvenile lavender three spots from a
friend who was raising them out from fry and I'm holding them temporarily until I
transfer them to the person who runs the YouTube channel H.C. Aqua hopefully
they're close enough in size so that one doesn't start to bully the other
I feel like gouramis are the poor man's Arowana the way they move it have a sort
of undulating snake-like glide through the water and they have individual
personalities and I guess they do have some cons which makes them not as
popular as other aquarium fish such as you really do need to manage their their
aggressiveness they can be quite brutal on each other especially if a setup is
wrong but for those who are inclined to try and keep them they can be rewarding
and they are beautiful
on the plus side for having such a large and showy fish they really do produce
very little waste given their size if you look at the distance between their
mouths and where their anus is it's a very short distance compared to their
total body length most of their body length is caudal peduncle therefore
their guts or all the organs that keep the fish alive
that's quite short and as a result I've noticed that these fish produce very
little waste for a similar sized fish such as cichlids or something in the
carp family a goldfish or barbs they would be creating a lot more waste
perhaps that best illustrate this with a drawing so let's see here we take a look
at how a typical gourami looks you know basically you have a long body and
here's the anus here's the nose but basically you have a fish that is
predominantly caudal peduncle this length here is all caudal
peduncle and his pectoral fin basically this is his guts that lead to you know
producing fish waste and you compare that to say the other types of popular
fish let's say a cichlid where you have a much longer abdomen and a short caudal
peduncle you know we have a long dorsal there short you know fin
you know ventral pectorals yeah you have all of that being is abdomen the short
caught up you don't go I mean comparing you know gourami versus
a cichlid you know quite different body architecture and the most extreme
example you know say something in a carp family or even more extreme you know one
of our domestic kid goldfish with a very exaggerated egg shape type body plan you
know it's a big abdomen here and you know fins ventral fins dorsal pectorals
you have you know all this being is you know waste producing abdomen very short
caudal peduncle so you know gourami basically build like this small abdomen
compared to a cichlid medium type abdomen or a most exaggerated
domesticated gold fish a very large abdomen
not to mention being members of the anabantid or labyrinth fish family they
do come up to the surface and breathe atmospheric air therefore they're a
little bit more tolerant of water that's depleted oxygen-wise you should still
keep the water clean however for my tubs that I run without filters they're
ideally suited for slow-moving or still water although for the most part these
fish just cruise about and swim very deliberately when needed and when they
want to they can really move with exceptional speed basically a few flicks
of his tail will propel this fish from one end of a 40-inch tub to the other in
an instant he almost can't even see it
lately it's just an status quo with these gouramis which isn't bad thank you
for watching