How to tell a Honey Gourami from other small Gourami species

[laritheloud]

So after a fun little side-discussion in another user's thread about his honey gouramis, I thought since there's so much confusion both in stores and among hobbyists about which gouramis are true honey gouramis and which are actually a different species, I'd help define the distinction.

True Honey Gouramis have the scientific name Trichogaster Chuna (formerly Colisa Chuna). They can be sold as Honey Gouramis, Honey Dwarf Gouramis, Sunset Honey Gouramis, or Gold Honey Gouramis.

This is the classic selectively-bred gold colorway for honey gouramis:

The top is a male, and the bottom is a female.

Now, things start to get really confusing when we look at wild-type honey gouramis or "sunset" honey gouramis. Sometimes Sunset honey gouramis are a different name for a vivid strain of gold honeys, and sometimes they're just another name for wild-type honey gouramis. They can look like this pair:



Or they can look like this:



In-store, the latter pair are wild type honey gouramis, and to make things really insanely difficult males and females will both look drab and silver when you look at them at your LFS. They can both have a stripe down their sides and their colors can change in a flash. If you ever decide to go for wild-type honeys, keep it in mind that it's extremely difficult to sex accurately in store and you may not know what you get until you take them home.

Everythings gets to be a bigger jumbled mess when we account for the mislabeling of other species. The most common confusion is with Trichogaster Labiosa or the "Sunset" colorway of the Thick-Lipped Gourami (note: i actually love the wild coloration but it's impossible to find in the US!). Sometimes, you'll see labels like Red Honey Gouramis or Sunset Gouramis in the store. Sometimes they will be explicitly called honey gouramis. The only way you can tell the difference between Thick-Lips and Honeys is by taking a good look at them. Honeys will always be diminutive and oval-shaped. Honeys will always have color in their caudal fins. Thick-lips have a deeper body, more prominent lips, and clear to mottled caudal fins. Like so:



The above image is a male sunset honey gourami. When fully colored and grown, they can range from a deep orange to a ruddy red-brown. They could get speckled with black, too. This image is of a female:



Females tend to be a little lighter in color, and their dorsal fins are much more rounded. Dorsal fins in males extend to a long point.

So if you look at a 'sunset' gourami or a 'red honey' gourami and see that clear-to-white caudal fin, it's pretty much guaranteed to be a thicklip gourami variation.

Knowing which species you have can help guide hobbyists to purchasing the correct species as mates for a tank. It can also help with gauging stocking levels and how many can fit in a space. Honeys can happily live their lives in a 10 gallon tank, because they only grow to two inches, and the are quite calm and peaceful fish. Thicklips, while very peaceful, can grow to reach a beefy 3.5 to 4 inches, and need at least 15 gallons of space or they will get cranky. Thicklips tend to be less shy and more outgoing, and as they grow, they are more likely to exhibit minor aggression.

Hope this helps with identifying true honeys!

[laritheloud]

Adding a tag to @Hobbit per her request! 😁

This one is a great picture of two wild-types and one gold-type. The fish on the far left is a male wild-type honey gourami in the middle of changing into breeding dress. The fish in the middle is a female, and how literally all wild honey gouramis will look in a store tank. The fish on the right is a plump female gold honey gourami.

[ARMYVET]

Remind me not to get any Gourami...😵

[laritheloud]

On 9/21/2021 at 11:06 AM, ARMYVET said:

Remind me not to get any Gourami...😵

But they're just so cute!!! 😆

It's best to stick with single gourami species per tank, though. Sexing is the biggest challenge and really important for peace of the tank!

[laritheloud]

A little bit of Lady Marmalade, my thicklip. As a treat.

And Mario, my male honey.

[Hobbit]

Yay! Thank you, this is very helpful!

Also I love the name Mario for a honey. ☺️ 

[laritheloud]

Case in point about how confusing it can be to sex Honey Gouramis.

[Hobbit]

Hmm. I want to say male except that swollen belly is giving me pause.

[laritheloud]

On 10/20/2021 at 1:35 AM, Hobbit said:

Hmm. I want to say male except that swollen belly is giving me pause.

I’m reasonably sure she’s a highly colored wild female but darned if she doesn’t confuse the heck out of me!!! She doesn’t quite have the intense colors of a male but she’s still got an orange tint. She was guarding an algae tablet yesterday with those colors, and my gold male is in his breeding colors.

[Hobbit]

Ah! Very confusing. 😆 She isn’t full grown, is she? If she still has some growing to do, the body shape might give her away. If she’s already full grown… well good luck until you see them mating!

[laritheloud]

On 10/20/2021 at 12:39 PM, Hobbit said:

Ah! Very confusing. 😆 She isn’t full grown, is she? If she still has some growing to do, the body shape might give her away. If she’s already full grown… well good luck until you see them mating!

I'm moving my thicklip gourami to my 55 gallon this week, so we'll see what happens after my gold honey is no longer being chased around by a thick lady!

EDIT: I brought her home about 6 months ago (maybe 7?) and she hasn't grown a LOT since then. She's a little bigger than my gold honey male.

Edited October 20, 2021 by laritheloud

[Vincentius Indra]

Thanks for the post now i know for sure that my gourami is indeed a thick lipped gourami not a honey gourami.

[laritheloud]

Glad to hear that @Vincentius Indra! I hope you love your thicklip!

[Karen B.]

@laritheloud

Greetings! Could you help me identify correctly my specy and the gender please? I have had Pikachu for a while and wanted to buy him 2 girlfriends… yet I am not sure that is what the fish store sold me.

Here is Pikachu. Pretty sure it’s a male sunset honey gourami

Here is the first baby.  I think it’s a female honey gourami? Or a female wild type honey gourami?

And here is the second baby that has me completely confused. Is it a male or a female?

 

If I am correct about the first two, can they cohabitate together? What about the third one? Could he/she join the other 2 (in a 20 gallons) or I should rehome him/her?

Thank you!

[laritheloud]

@Karen B. Congratulations, you have two females and one male! The two females are both gold-type honey gouramis. 🙂 They are so sweet! The body shape on your new female screams 'lady' to me. Female honey gouramis have a different body shape and face to males. I almost think they look more docile and sweet at a glance, lol! Males have a slightly blunter face in comparison to females.

Also just FYI, I think in a 20 you can squeeze in a group of 4, so even if you did have two males you could try to add one more female. I ended up with two males in a 29 gallon (I ... THINK we have decided our wild-type is actually a male) and they do not hurt each other, though one is clearly the dominant boy. We are adding an extra 100% female to the mix, though, and I'll update accordingly.

EDIT to add: They should be able to cohabitate just fine! Bear in mind that male gouramis get a bit rowdy and will chase away females from 'their' corner (potential nesting spot) and possibly from some food. This is normal. It will not get violent, it's mostly short spurts of chasing, and just make sure you have plants and line-of-sight breaks for everyone. 

On 10/20/2021 at 1:35 AM, Hobbit said:

Hmm. I want to say male except that swollen belly is giving me pause.

Update: We are now quite sure he's a very reserved male 😅 I've witnessed the entire body go orange and black, but not super bright. Sub-dominant colors. Just goes to show you -- We've had these fish for 9 to 10 months and we just now figure our wild type is a male.

Edited December 11, 2021 by laritheloud

[Karen B.]

@laritheloud Greetings!

Thank you so much for your answers. Makes me feel better. It always stresses me so much when there is some kind of agression going on. I don’t want the submissive fish to be stressed, unhappy or die.

I am surprised that this one is a female too even without the dark line! She was chasing the other baby all the time, especially when there was food involved and was Very territorial so I concluded it was a male, hehe. So I could add her too in my 20 with the 2 others? 
 

[laritheloud]

On 12/11/2021 at 12:59 PM, Karen B. said:

@laritheloud Greetings!

Thank you so much for your answers. Makes me feel better. It always stresses me so much when there is some kind of agression going on. I don’t want the submissive fish to be stressed, unhappy or die.

I am surprised that this one is a female too even without the dark line! She was chasing the other baby all the time, especially when there was food involved and was Very territorial so I concluded it was a male, hehe. So I could add her too in my 20 with the 2 others? 
 

So long as the ORANGE color is rimming the top of her dorsal fin, yes! It should be fine. You will know immediately if she turns out to be a he, but I’m reasonably sure she is female. I just put a wild type female in with my other honeys and she only faintly intensified in color, no beard.

[laritheloud]

Updating with pictures of my wild type pair!!! Female on top two pics, subdominant male in the bottom two, not fully colored.

Plus male mid courtship display 

[Karen B.]

On 12/11/2021 at 4:58 PM, laritheloud said:

Updating with pictures of my wild type pair!!! Female on top two pics, subdominant male in the bottom two, not fully colored.

Plus male mid courtship display 

I so don’t like when they color their beard black. So much cuter all yellow! Good thing I am not a gourami 😄

[laritheloud]

I'm going to follow up with a bit more information now that the tank has settled for a few days! Some info:

Males will 'patrol' a tank and chase females to show their 'affection.'
Females are more interested in nibbling food in peace than in paying any attention to males.
Females will work out their place in the social hierarchy with mild circling and fin-flaring. Two males will spar more vigorously than a female with a female. Neither should result in actual harm, just a bit of chasing and then they settle.
A male and a female will 'dance' side-by-side for quite a long time as a part of courtship. Sometimes they'll flop on top of each other on the substrate before resuming. They're fine.
Females can be distinguished from males by their body shape and tapered faces. They tend to have 'cinched' caudal fins and more of a belly, along with a narrower nose/snout area. Males tend to have blunter faces and more ovular/rectangular body shapes. Some may have a belly if they're well-fed, but proportionately, the caudal peduncle will not be as cinched as a female.

Now for photos!

Thicklip  gourami male:

 

Thicklip gourami female. Note the thicker belly area and narrower nose/caudal peduncle:


Wild Type Honey Gourami FEMALE, settled and well-colored. By herself in a separate tank she is silver with orange-rimmed fins; this is the most intense she colors. Sometimes her stripe down the midline will darken and stretch THROUGH the gill plate and in front of the eyes:



Golden Honey Gourami FEMALE:


Wild Type Honey Gourami SUBDOMINANT Male. Note the blunter face and the lemon yellow top fin. Stripe along the body is visible on most occasions, but when you compare him to the female wild type, the dark black throat has an outline that extends over his face and eye (while for the female, it's restricted to the anal fin). The orange also gets much more saturated on and off, and it changes within a span of seconds:


And finally, our dominant Golden Honey Gourami Male:

[Streetwise]

This is very informative!

[laritheloud]

Glad to help, @Streetwise! It can be so hard to sex a honey gourami and tell what you're looking at in a store, especially since thicklipped gouramis sometimes get sold under the honey label. It's really hard to find good information about sexing online, too, and I think it's always helpful to know what species and sex you have! I figured a side-by-side of photos can help other folks out.

[ari]

Hi there!

This is very helpful.

I had purchased a couple of what I was told were "Sunset Honey Gouramis" at the LFS. I stumbled upon this forum in my efforts to try and figure out the sex, and along the way discovered I apparently had thick-lipped gouramis. They were pretty, but I read they could get up to 5 inches in size and could be a little more testy than Honeys, which wouldn't be great for my 16-gallon tank, so I returned them and began my search for actual Honey Gouramis.

 

I arrived at this site, which showed me 2 results: "Red Gold Honey Dwarf Gourami" and "Honey Dwarf Gourami." The latter appeared to be the Wild-Type Honeys you are describing here, so I ordered a pair about a month ago. They arrived looking identical, but have some slight differences now. I'm wondering if you could help me figure out the sex on them?

One of the two has brighter yellow fins.

 

The other appears to have more faint yellow/duller coloration on the fins.

Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[laritheloud]

Hi @ari! From your photos, they both look female to me, but they also could still be young. The signs that are saying 'female' are the shape of the body (belly, tapered nose, tapered caudal peduncle) and the way their stripe passes all the way through their gill plates and wraps through the snout. I'm also seeing some orange rims on the fins. My male wild-type tends to look quite a bit darker when he's at rest than my female.

As they settle, they will likely start to look like my wild-type female. She looked almost exactly like yours when she was alone.

How long have you had your two beauties? Talk to me a bit more about their behavior. Does either of them chase the other, or are they mostly puttering around the tank and looking for food? My dominant male went nuts chasing everyone his first day then calmed and only chases the female honeys now. My subdominant, milder male would chase a female away from food and his resting spot, but most of the time he keeps to himself like the shy boy he is.

Also RE: your thicklips, they are also great fish, but you were right to return them. A 16 gallon is enough for only one thicklip. They don't reach five inches, but they can get between 3 and 5 inches and need more space than a 16 gallon holds for a pair. I'd say the smallest you can go for a pair of thicklips is 20 gallons, but I'd probably steer towards keeping two females and no males in that size.

 

EDIT: I'm going to say that the bottom pic is definitely a female. The top one is probably a female, but could be an extremely young male. If it is a male, the behavior will tip you off, and he will color up soon. I would not count on a male/female pair and assume the two are female unless one starts showing more distinct male-pattern color and behavior. 

Edited December 15, 2021 by laritheloud

[ari]

Thanks @laritheloud!

I've had them for both for a month now.

Behavior-wise, they mostly just explore the tank nibbling. Every now and then one chases the other for a quick moment but it's not persistent. The brighter-yellow fish is more bold and curious; for instance when I took the pics this evening it had no problem hanging out near the front of the tank and letting me snap shots. The other was very shy and required a lot more patience to get a good shot of. I kind of think you're right about having 2 females, though.

Would love to get a male/female pair but I have no idea how to get more of these fish without ordering online and paying through the nose in shipping (and even then I could just get more females – not a viable option for my tank size). Neither of the LFS's in my immediate area had any curiosity or interest in learning the difference between the thick-lipped and the Honeys either (out of probably 8 fish I saw between both stores, they all looked like thick-lipped), and it sounds like their distributors have no idea either. 

Maybe a larger store might have a better source or more of an idea. Or maybe some type of fish trade show?!

Anyway, thanks again!