My Flame Gourami eating my tetras!

[gwennsc]

My Flame Gourami has developed a taste for his tank mates my neon tetras. Is there anything I can do to stop this? Or will I be forced to have a ten gallon tank with only my gourami. I almost think he is just bored.

[CorydorasEthan]

On 6/13/2021 at 9:08 PM, gwennsc said:

My Flame Gourami has developed a taste for his tank mates my neon tetras. Is there anything I can do to stop this? Or will I be forced to have a ten gallon tank with only my gourami. I almost think he is just bored.

Hm this is odd. I didn't know that flame gourami (a type of dwarf gourami) are big enough to eat neon tetras. How big were the neons, and how big is the gourami? Any pictures?

Edited June 14, 2021 by CorydorasEthan

[gwennsc]

Around 3/4 of an inch. He just takes a bite. I don’t think they were dead when he started eating them 🤷‍♀️. Ive lost 6 in the last 2 months! At first I had an ammonia event, but now he is just chomping them!

[Griznatch]

Probably just male dwarf gourami aggression. I took the 2 back to my LFS because if it.

[gardenman]

Perhaps showing your gourami the scene from "Finding Nemo" where Bruce (the shark) says, "Fish are friends, not food" would help. As a general rule I find most fish just bite anything that moves to see if it's food. They also bite things that don't move to see if they're food. If what they're biting is  small enough to get seriously damaged by a bite, well it becomes food.  If I put my arm in a tank a fish or two will swim over and give it a peck or two to see if it's food. If there's some debris floating in the water pretty much every fish will give it a bite to see if it's food. Put a new plant in the tank and the fish will peck away at it to see if it's food. Fish seem to touch things with their mouth on a very regular basis. If what they're touching with their mouth tastes good, they'll eat it. Your gourami has found out that tetras taste good, so he's eating them. If your gourami was a puppy you could use the bitter apple spray on things he/she was trying to eat that you'd prefer not be eaten. It's kind of hard to spray tetras with bitter apple spray though. There aren't a lot of great options for you. Fish eat fish on a very regular basis.

[Colu]

I would suggest add some taller plants such as vallisneria or Hornwort to break up lines of sight and provide more cover for your neons to hide and some floating plants like water lettuce or Amazonian frogbit with there long trailing roots to provide more cover

[Rudles]

On 6/13/2021 at 6:08 PM, gwennsc said:

My Flame Gourami has developed a taste for his tank mates my neon tetras. Is there anything I can do to stop this? Or will I be forced to have a ten gallon tank with only my gourami. I almost think he is just bored.

I'm having the same problem with my Angelfish. He's eaten 13 of 14 Neon Tetras. So far he hasn't bothered my Cardinal Tetras. The next time I'm going to set up my 10 gallon tank as a grow out tank for my Neon Tetras. 

[gwennsc]

I decided to try a larger fish and get some harlequin rasboras. It seems to be working so far. My remaining tetras get to retire to my 3.5 gallon hospital tank.