Sparkling Gourami

[Cinnebuns]

How many sparkling gourami would you suggest in a 20T along with a mutt guppy colony and some snails? I'm thinking between 3-5. I've had many gourami in the past but never sparkling. I know they are a smaller one and like some of their own kind. Also, any suggestions on sexing them and a good male to female ratio? Ty

[Theplatymaster]

In general more females to males works better with most speicies, i do hear they are very shy fish though.

[knee]

On 1/26/2023 at 1:43 PM, Cinnebuns said:

How many sparkling gourami would you suggest in a 20T along with a mutt guppy colony and some snails? I'm thinking between 3-5. I've had many gourami in the past but never sparkling. I know they are a smaller one and like some of their own kind. Also, any suggestions on sexing them and a good male to female ratio? Ty

5 is a good number for them but you can go up to 10 if the tank is heavily planted.

Sexing them is not hard but it requires extra steps. They're not sexually dimorphic like some other fish. 

You need to shine a light on their side and if you see ovaries then they're female. Here's a photo example

female on top and male on the bottom

[Schuyler]

I've only had sparkling gourami for like a week or two so take this advice with a decent helping of salt.

The males will get territorial if they start nesting. With a 20T you don't have a ton of top space for nests so if you have too many males there could be fighting.

That said, unless your buying some that are older you're going to have trouble figuring out who is a male vs female. I think someone in a video I watched said it's a year before you can really distinguish between them.

To me, they all look the same at the LFS 

[Theplatymaster]

On 1/26/2023 at 5:33 PM, Schuyler said:

To me, they all look the same at the LFS 

unless its a livebearer,unusually large, or visibly carrying eggs, sexing fish at the LFS is always hard. For most fish.