Grunting gourami - care and maintenance in the aquarium

When buying an aquarium, you need to be clearly aware that its inhabitants are also living things, like cats and dogs. Yes, they cannot be stroked and taken out for a walk to show off their pets to their neighbors. But they also require care, attention and proper care, in return bringing peace of mind and quiet joy.

The house has a piece of the ocean

Not many were fortunate enough to dive with a scuba gear on the seabed and hiding, watching the flickering of tropical fish. Their multicolor is compared with a living rainbow, and underwater plants and corals only add color to this unreal wildlife show. And even if this magnificence cannot be taken home, the photographs and impressions fade over time. But you can install an aquarium in the house and breed guppies you know from childhood in it, or take a swing at tropical exotics, for example, grumbling gourami.

Aquarium is considered a closed ecosystem with its own laws and preferences. Therefore, it is very important not only to create comfortable conditions for the inhabitants, but also to select the fish so that they live together and do not harm each other.

Guest from Southeast Asia

The grumbling gourami is unpretentious and lives in nature in almost any body of water from a stream to a roadside ditch. He looks like a domestic sparrow, who lives everywhere and is fed up with small crumbs. Due to the different living conditions, the fish of this species may look very different in appearance, but the conditions for their care and maintenance are exactly the same.

Often they say "Dumb, like a fish." It is a pity that they did not hear the “conversations” of the grunting gourami, especially during the courtship of the female or disputes between males. The uninitiated will be struck by the sounds coming from the aquarium. They slightly resemble a mixture of croaking, grunts and cod. This is fish talking.

In order for the gourami to feel good, he needs:

1. Aquarium with a capacity of at least 30 liters.
2. The company, because the fish are schooling and feels comfortable in the amount of 6 - 10 pieces, like neons.
3. Lush bottom vegetation.
4. Artificial shelters in the form of grottoes, snags or decorative figures.
5. Cover to keep water temperature stable.

Aeration and filtration should be weak, almost imperceptible. If you need to breed fish, then it is necessary to exclude the slightest fluctuations in water, only then the gourami will begin to build a nest. Often, water does not need to be changed, it is enough 1 - 2 times a month to update 10 - 20% of the volume of the aquarium.

The character of the fish is good-natured and a little shy, so she will constantly hide from noisy neighbors and will not show her delicate beauty of thin fins and neat stripes.

Kind family man and caring father

For beginner aquarists, it will be a real pleasure to watch the construction of the nest, the ritual of courtship, and the care of caviar and fry. The grumbling gourami takes all the trouble about the offspring of the male, like a true man, upon himself. Courting a female will not begin without a nest for eggs. Its construction is carried out from air bubbles that are attached under a sheet of a floating plant.

The female lays from 70 to 180 eggs for spawning. The quantity depends on its age and size. The male collects eggs with his mouth and places them in the nest. Then the female is put out of spawning, and the happy father eagerly gets to work. He has only a few days until the fry become independent, and will not need his guardianship. During this time, you need to do a lot of things: remove dead eggs, raise the nest, and make sure that the hatched fidgets do not spread out in all corners.

After 2 days, the grown fry begin to feed on their own and from that moment the male loses interest in them and again becomes a “free and attractive man”. It can be planted in the main aquarium and focus on taking care of the fry. Grunting gourami in nature is a micro-predator and feeds on insects, crustaceans and larvae, and enjoys eating fly flies - Drosophila. In an aquarium, he will not refuse any food: live, dry, frozen. He likes to collect nutrient particles at the surface of the water, but can catch a tidbit in the middle lane and even at the very bottom.

Adult fish reach 7 - 7.5 cm and live about 5 years. It is noteworthy that females mature faster, by 6 months, and males will need 1 - 2 years to reach maturity. Gourami are sensitive to the composition of water. Despite the fact that in nature they sometimes live in unexpected places: in rice fields, in irrigation canals, all large and small reservoirs, in captivity they can become sick if the water has too high an indicator of softness and acidity. Saves filtration and special additives available in any pet store. Optimal water performance:

• temperature 24-28 ° C;
• acidity level 6.0-7.5 pH;
• stiffness indicators within 5-20 °.

For beginner aquarists, grumbling gourami is a real find. Beautiful, unpretentious in food, calmly relating to the neighborhood of other fish: swordsmen, neon, thorns, labio.

Video: aquarium fish grunting gourami