Honey Gourami Behavior

[Wallet]

I have a 60g tank (one of the Aqueon breeders) in my office that I set up about 8 months ago and added fish to about a month after that. It's only my second tank (I ran a smaller tank for about half a year to make sure I didn't hate taking care of an aquarium), so my experience is limited.

I have 6 Trichogaster chuna (Honey Gourami) in the tank. I got them as juveniles so they couldn't be definitively sexed. Two of them are definitely male, and a couple are definitely female. The other two I assume are female but I don't really know for sure.

Ever since the two male gourami have colored up, the group has split. There's a Nymphaea stellata on the left edge of the tank, and the two male gourami pretty much exclusively hang out under its pads, one in the front corner and one in the back. 

The rest of the gourami occupy the rest of the tank. The only time I see the male gourami leave their fiefdoms is when they decide to chase away a female invader. Even when I feed they wait for the food to drift over to them, and they don't seem to have any interest in any of their non-gourami tank mates. The two males seem to have some kind of agreement, because they don't bother each other at all.

I have seen one of the males and one of the females swimming around each other in a tight spiral a couple times, which I assume is some kind of mating behavior.

Sorry for all the words, but is this normal? I feel bad that the two males spend all of their time occupying their little six inch cubes and never enjoy the rest of the tank. I'm not sure if it's an indication that I should really only have one male in there or if that's just how they are. I don't really care if the gourami breed or not, but I would like them to be happy. 

I'm bad at taking photos through glass, but here's one of the full tank:

And the left side where the males hang out (conveniently hiding in the photo):

And where everyone else spends their time:

If it's relevant, these are all the fish in there:
6 Trichogaster chuna (Honey Gourami)
10+ Pseudomugil gertrudae (Blue Eye Rainbowfish) - Every couple months one or two new babies will show up when I'm feeding, guessing there's 15 or 16 in there now
20 Celestichthys marginatus (Celestial Pearl Danio)
10 Pangio semicincta (Kuhli Loach)
6 Corydoras habrosus (Salt & Pepper Cory)

And inverts:
20 Caridina multidentata (Amano shrimp)
6 Neritina auriculata (Batman Nerite)
6 Neritina juttingae (King Koopa Nerite)

There's also a lonely ramshorn as well as some number of bladder snails, pond snails, and malaysian trumpet snails, all of which showed up on their own (from the plants, I imagine).
 

[Travis]

Great looking tank! From my experience keeping Honey Gourami they tend to pick a territory and chill there most of the time outside of feeding. They might like the left side because of the cover and if the flow is slower there it could be a spot for them to create bubble nests. The less colorful ones could be female but its rare to find females at most stores. They could be males that are not dominant. If they have a clearly rounded anal fin its a male. Hard to tell from your photos but how much flow is in the tank? These fish originate from mostly slow moving waters excess current could be keeping them from moving around the tank as much.

 

[Cinnebuns]

It sounds similar to my thick-lipped gourami behavior.  Often thick-lipped are labeled "red honey gourami" but they aren't honey gourami. 

Twice I've had this happen although only have 2 and had 3 the time it first happened. The male turns brown and guards a spot near the top of the tank. He chases anyone away but especially the females. 

From my understanding this is mating behavior. Check where they are guarding for a bubble nest. I don't know a lot about breeding bubble nesters so I can't advise you from there if you want babies I'm sorry. 

[Schuyler]

On 9/19/2022 at 8:36 AM, Wallet said:

There's also a lonely ramshorn

Wait... It's possible to have just one? Maybe you just can't see the other 47 yet lol

But seriously, that is an awesome tank! I love all the big plants and wood it feels very natural

[Wallet]

On 9/22/2022 at 10:08 PM, Travis said:

Great looking tank! From my experience keeping Honey Gourami they tend to pick a territory and chill there most of the time outside of feeding. They might like the left side because of the cover and if the flow is slower there it could be a spot for them to create bubble nests. The less colorful ones could be female but its rare to find females at most stores. They could be males that are not dominant. If they have a clearly rounded anal fin its a male. Hard to tell from your photos but how much flow is in the tank? These fish originate from mostly slow moving waters excess current could be keeping them from moving around the tank as much.

 

I got them from The Wet Spot and they at least seemed to think they had males and females since they agreed to try and send me more females than males (even though they couldn't guarantee anything because of their age). The ones I assume are female don't have much or any orange and they have a pronounced dark stripe down their side. I couldn't get the camera to focus on the fish (who was very much not helping) but here's a terrible blurry photo of one of them:

The flow could certainly have something to do with it. The far left has the lowest flow because that's where the intake is, with a spray bar across the rest of the top. Even the tiny fish seem to be able to swim fine in the top couple of inches of water where the flow is strongest so it's not super intense (it's also getting broken up by some crypt affinis red that inexplicably went nuts and turned into a bush).

On 9/23/2022 at 6:14 AM, Cinnebuns said:

It sounds similar to my thick-lipped gourami behavior.  Often thick-lipped are labeled "red honey gourami" but they aren't honey gourami. 

Twice I've had this happen although only have 2 and had 3 the time it first happened. The male turns brown and guards a spot near the top of the tank. He chases anyone away but especially the females. 

From my understanding this is mating behavior. Check where they are guarding for a bubble nest. I don't know a lot about breeding bubble nesters so I can't advise you from there if you want babies I'm sorry. 

I've checked a few times before and not noticed anything but there are a bunch of tiny bubbles under one of the pads right where one of the males hangs out that I don't see on any of the other pads. I don't know that I could tell the difference between a bubble nest and a bunch of bubbles. This is the best photo I could manage in daylight:

 

On 9/23/2022 at 9:31 AM, Schuyler said:

Wait... It's possible to have just one? Maybe you just can't see the other 47 yet lol

But seriously, that is an awesome tank! I love all the big plants and wood it feels very natural

I've had the ramshorn for more than a year (it showed up in the small tank I had before this one) so I suspect it's really just the one. To be fair I didn't notice the malaysian trumpet snails until a good five months after the last plant went in the tank, so there could be a whole colony of them hiding somewhere that I'm oblivious to.

[KatGoneFishing]

I only have three honey gourami in a 20gal, but this sounds like fairly typical behavior. The males stake out a spot that they like to build their bubble nest, then are fairly defensive of the area, especially if there are eggs/fry. I've never had an issue with the males not coming over for food, though occasionally one of the three is a bit hesitant because of a bit of food aggression. I've also not really had much issue with the males being aggressive to the female just for being close to their area, either, except for the last couple of weeks because I've got fry and the father was very aggressive towards both of the others.

The pictures you posted, that is definitely a bubble nest in the last photo, with a male in full breeding color (all orange and gold with a full black throat/belly). It's hard to see if there are any eggs in the photo, but they'll basically be black dots among the bubbles. If you are able to get a finger in there to poke at the bubbles, they will move or stick to your finger, but not pop.

It's possibly that you either have a mix of colors or just wild-type honeys. This thread is a really good look at the different options and how to sex honey gourami. My own honeys are the sunset variety, so both males and females have full body color, the males are just more vibrant, develop that black throat/belly, and have a bright lemon yellow color to their dorsal fins. The picture you shared of the one fish, I would agree with that being a female. Depending on how long you've had them, if you haven't seen any black developing along the throats/bellies, then it's fairly safe to assume they're female.

[Wallet]

On 9/23/2022 at 5:34 PM, KatGoneFishing said:

I only have three honey gourami in a 20gal, but this sounds like fairly typical behavior. The males stake out a spot that they like to build their bubble nest, then are fairly defensive of the area, especially if there are eggs/fry. I've never had an issue with the males not coming over for food, though occasionally one of the three is a bit hesitant because of a bit of food aggression. I've also not really had much issue with the males being aggressive to the female just for being close to their area, either, except for the last couple of weeks because I've got fry and the father was very aggressive towards both of the others.

The pictures you posted, that is definitely a bubble nest in the last photo, with a male in full breeding color (all orange and gold with a full black throat/belly). It's hard to see if there are any eggs in the photo, but they'll basically be black dots among the bubbles. If you are able to get a finger in there to poke at the bubbles, they will move or stick to your finger, but not pop.

It's possibly that you either have a mix of colors or just wild-type honeys. This thread is a really good look at the different options and how to sex honey gourami. My own honeys are the sunset variety, so both males and females have full body color, the males are just more vibrant, develop that black throat/belly, and have a bright lemon yellow color to their dorsal fins. The picture you shared of the one fish, I would agree with that being a female. Depending on how long you've had them, if you haven't seen any black developing along the throats/bellies, then it's fairly safe to assume they're female.

They still eat, they just don't seem nearly as food motivated as the others or they don't want to leave their little corners—because the intake is over there the food drifts that way and they usually wait for it instead of going all the way across the tank. 

They're all dead ringers for wild type honey gourami (thanks for the link, that thread was helpful). The two males that hang out over on their side of the tank both are rich orange with black on the underside. I'll have to take a closer look at the others when they're all out next time I feed.