dwarf gourami harassing blue ram

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edlab03

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Apr 8, 2009
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I currently have a heavily planted 29 gallon with a male dwarf sunset gourami, harloquin rasboras and corys. Last night I added a male blue ram and the dwarf gourami has been harassing him ever since no fin nipping just bullying/chasing him around. Is this something I should be worried about or is the dwarf gourami just showing the blue ram who's boss in the tank? I don't want it to get to the point where the blue ram is so stressed that he will die.

Any input will be appreciated. Thanks.
 
Do you have any caves for the rams? They are most comfortable in caves. They are really easy to create too. Not always the best looking but the easiest is a small clay pot cracked in half and laid on it's side. or upside down with a hole in it. Another way is to use aquarium silicon to glue some pieces of slate together to form a small cave.

I have 3 dwarf gourami and 2 blue rams. The only aggression is ram vs ram and gourami vs gourami. Which the plants seam the cut down on the gourami aggression and the caves cut down on the ram aggression. Anytime a gourami and a ram have a stare down the ram retreats to a cave and the gourami just goes about it's business.
 
dwarf sunsets are rarely very aggressive, especially to other fish species. He is probably just defending his territory. If the harrassing doesn't settle down soon or gets worse I would definately follow bradlgt's advise and put in some cover. In addition you might rearrange the tank decor a bit as this can sometimes help with territory issues.
 
I will be adding a few clay pots to tank in a bit I just have to do a bit of rearranging being that the tank is heavily planted.

***I've been searching here as well as other sites and my blue ram looks nothing like the pics I have seen. It doesnt have the black spot on it like on others I have seen. I'm pretty sure it's not a Bolivian ram. It has a hint of yellow on the underside with a very very slight hint of blue. It looks very very pale. Could it be that it's just stressed out from all the chasing?***
 
I am sorry to say it man but they were blue rams. I wished I would have read this sooner. My blue rams looked bigger then the stuff in the store and with internet pictures were identicle to bolivian rams. I was 100% sure I was douped. Then they started coloring up. Now they are all blue and yellow with spots. Ram's lose all of their color when transported and stressed. And I mean all, they will be a gray brown color when stressed. Give them a week to get used to the tank and they will start coloring up like you wouldn't believe.
 
Thanks for the advice everyone. I may give them a try again later on. Next time I will have the tank better prepared by having alot of hiding places.
 
Since the rams are in the dwarf Cichlid family they prefer little rock caves. But your setup sounds great for the gourami with all the plants. Maybe that's why he is aggressive. Just so comfortable in his home that he feels dominate. Well good luck next time with them. Rock caves are really easy too so you shouldn't have any problem. Having lots of plant growth should help too. If the ram looks out of a cave and only see's plants it will be very calming. Read that somewhere don't remember where though.
 
I was thinking the same thing about the Gourami. He has been in there for about 2 months now and was probably freaked out by the new addition. I just added a few more plants yesterday since that's what I swapped the blue ram out for. I'm going to wait for the new plants to grow out a bit more and add the caves in there to make it more suitable for a ram which will probably be in the next few months. I would really like to try the blue ram again since I fell in love with them from the beginning and now that I finally found a place that sells them regularly it won't be so hard to find them.
 
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