african cichlids and a .... combtail gourami?!!

[bluesfanstoll]

So first, hello to you all. this seems to be a nice site with good info and active users.

My question is as follows. I currently have a 30 gallon (upgrading to 70 in the next week or 2) with 5 africans in it (i have 6 tanks set up, from fresh to salt, but am new to cichlids). The cichlids I have are all about 2.5 inches or so and still fairly young. I currently have an acei, a red stripe, a sunshine peacock, a johanni, and a blood red jewel.

In its own tank i have a combtail gourami (female i believe and pretty close to full grown). Originally i bought the combtail to put into my beautiful and happy 55 gallon of angels and a few gouramis (opaline, flame dwarf, and paradise). Because i decided to not research the combtail first, i ended up losing a powder blue dwarf as well as almost losing another. I pulled her out immediately and stuck her in a 5 gallon alone until i could figure out what to do.

All that said, my question is if those of you with more knowledge, think that the combtail and the africans could survive together. I feel like as fiesty as the cichlids are, and as much of a jerk as the combtail is, that they might be just fine.

Thoughts?? should i wait until the cichlids are bigger? is it a bad idea? etc...

Thanks for any and all your comments/thoughts.

 

[oo7genie]

The mbuna will most likely kill the gourami, though your mbuna are a couple of the more milder aggressive species.

Still, not a risk I'd take.

 

[bluesfanstoll]

ya i wasnt sure what to expect. the comb is a pretty mean sucker. he was smacking everyone around. SO i thought perhaps the africans might keep him in check. Probably wont risk it, but im still very much interested in your opinions.

Thanks all

 

[SickBum]

Actually he should be fine. Gourami is a top swimmer, and africans will try to stay in the rocks. They are also tougher than they look, and the guys you have are not very aggressive, especially since you just have one of each and all different colors they probably will just wander around aimlessly with nothing to do.

 

[Jannika]

I've had a giant danio in my Malawi tank since day one that is completely ignored by all. I think most aggression in this case occurs between same species or look-alike fish. Competition.

 

[RNeiswander]

I've got a tiger barb, 2 red serpae tetras and a black skirt tetra in my 55 gallon cichlid tank. I've got yellow labs and auratus in there. The tetras and tiger barb get ignored for the most part except when the cichlids give a small chase. They're fins are fine and they're doing great.

So I'd give the gourami a shot lol

 

[silentcircuit]

Don't really think gouramis are generally as quick as barbs or tetras, but I'm sure it varies. So long as you're ready to pull them out if trouble arises, I don't see a problem with it.

If you have a particularly pushy gourami as you say, it may be the smaller cichlids that need to watch out. More likely they'll be ignored since they don't have a lot of interesting looking trailing fins and such, though. The only fish my gourami ever bothers is my angel, and the angel will chase anything if it gets in the right mood. Only good news is, everything in the tank is considerably faster than it so it works out fine.