# Dwarf Gourami disease! solutions?



## Richbinduga (Apr 4, 2013)

about 3, 3 1/2 weeks ago i went out and bought 5 dwarf gouramis for my 55. they been sitting in a 20 gallon quarantine since then. my cousen who also bought 5 of the same fish with me at the store put his immediately in his 55 with no problem. mine however are all getting sick! im down to 4 now and probably soon to be 3. im realy not sure what it is honestly, i want to say dwarf gourami disease. maybe its fish tb, ir a nasty fungal infection. also at the same time some of the gouramis have a mild ich infection. im so lost right now. i just want to get em in good health and move them to my 55. basically the sick ones look like they have red sores on their body, but it kind of looks like a fungus growing around it. one of them got a nice little grey patch on his head overnight. fins are clamped. the one with the sores has his fins clamped also and he just hangs out away from the others either at the bottom or behind the filter intake. hes really only active when feeding, which is good im glad it still has appetite. water parameters are normal. water changes weekly, sometimes twice a week. basically what i want answered is what am i dealing with? how do i overcome this? and how do i prevent this in the future?


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## coralbandit (Jul 29, 2012)

Although it would be very diffacult for me to say whether it is or is not Dwarf Gourami Disease,I will say that 9 out 10(if not an even higher rate{like 999 out of 1,000}) dqarf gouramissold are male.They are very intolerant of each other and think no matter what the "medical" issue is it is from stress from each other.
Your friend will have the same issue in time I believe.You are just getting it sooner from cramping them in a 20g.Even in the 55 I will bet your friend ends with 1 at best.They may make it but will not enjoy each others company(does anyone research anything before they buy ?)
There is no cure for dwarf gourami disease as it is from poor breeding and conditions at their place of origin(asian fish farms{possibly some southern US also}).The fishfarmsdon't sell females because they don't get them to last more than a year or two and need to keep up breeding stock!
a cure would be ;don't own dwarf gouramis,or buy from a reputable local breeder.


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## Richbinduga (Apr 4, 2013)

a hard pill to swallow but your right. it was a bad buy. ive always been interested in gouramis, havent heard of this sort of thing with regular gouramis though. i just couldnt pass em up when i saw them at the store. they were just so colorful haha and i liked that they were small. i guess ill be looking for other species to fill up my 55 gallon community


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## coralbandit (Jul 29, 2012)

Flamingo Honey Gouramis seem to get along decently and are much smaller still.They are all probly males only also but they are not as brutal to each other as the dwarfs.
It is a shame how the dwarf gourami will go down in history, but IMO it's time in popular fish keeping is closing rather quickly.
One other solution to prolong how long you can keep the dwarf is to have only one.That won't change any of the genetic make up but will eliminate the stress from each other.There are some links from people who claim decent success keeping a dwarf(2 years).


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## jrman83 (Jul 9, 2010)

Dwarfs are pretty and full of personality. My powder blue lived over a year until he developed some type of growth on him and eventually died. Learning the hard way on their issues with each other is tough. It took 3 other Dwarfs for me to realize what was going on and my original poder blue was still standing. I was new to Dwarfs about 3yrs ago.


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