Breeding and rearing the Dwarf Gourami onto maturity.
An introduction to the newcomer

Breeding the dwarf gourami is a simple matter, rearing the tiny fry is a different ball game.

Hello I'm Les, the author, Firstly I built this web site to guide the beginner on my been there and done it failures, and successes. You can count yourself clever if you learn from previous mistakes. I'm learning how to take better photographs in the meantime these will suffice. Some web authors are quoting from books, or other external sources, and it becomes obvious that the writers have no practical knowledge on the subject. If you follow my simple guide, I don't see how you can fail. The newly born fry of the Dwarf Gourami is one of the smallest of tropical fishes, the comma in the brackets (,) is the best way to describe it.

The photo below was taken from my breeding tank showing some gourami fry that are coming up for one week old. These tiny fish are still being fed on infusoria cultures or Liquifry No1™   till they become large enough to eat newly hatched shrimps. The photo on the right shows a group of young gouramis feeding on jellied shrimps, these fish are roughly six weeks old. It takes a few months to achieve the size of just under an inch long. But you may say to yourself so what! A problem arises with sibling bullying, brothers and sisters staking their claim in the hierarchical pecking order, this becomes a serious matter, not only can the weaker fish get injured, but account for a good few deaths amongst the smallest of the small. The bullying frightens the smaller fish from reaching food, hence the big boys get bigger and the small stop growing from lack of nutrients. The larger gouramis need quality flakes, live foods etc. To stop this happening you must continuously transfer the larger fish out of the breeding tank and into a compatable community tank, or as one reader asked can I use a tank-divider, the answer is yes, I use one myself in the community tank when I judge they're large enough to take care of themselves they get removed into the big boys section. So the pecking order continues once more, this may happen in nature but it's more marked in the confines of a fish tank. Thee that haven't bred gouramis before will be amazed at the total difference in size from the largest to the smallest, but there's a down side to this! Most of the really small fish will never reach maturity, some live but remain stunted runts. The reason for this is very simple, they were either denied the proper nourishment or bullied away from food when very young. The photo right gives you an idea of the different sizes of the fish as they grow, they all belong to the same hatch.