Female betta splendens and honey gouramis?.

[Eupterus]

Possible part of my new community tank. Gotten mixed info and I'll see what I get from this thread and go from there.
Planned tank setup is a heavily planted 29 gal.
The honey gouramis would be a male/female pair.

 

[lookit]

I'm so jealous. I had a male and female pair of honey gouramis, but my female died. Finding a replacement is hell. My LFS only seems to get males. Not sure if I would mix a female betta with the honeys, because honeys are so docile (at least my pair were). I'd be worried about losing the female and not being able to easily replace her.

 

[Eupterus]

No guarantee here either on getting a female. When I asked at the LFS down the street, I was told all the gouramis they sell are all mixed sexes unless the wholesaler says so and labels them as such. I got info about sexing them on AC chat and I'll have to go from there to see if there are actual female gouramis at this LFS.

 

[Eupterus]

Ok if anyone cares, I think I will go for six zebra danios and two honey gouramis in my 29 gal. The honey gouramis will be my next planned breeding project assuming I can pick out a male/female pair.

I got the new stand today, but I won't have time to setup the 29 until next Tuesday.
I'll bring the 29 in from storage and possible re seal it.
Which is OK...as excited as I am, there's really no hurry and plenty of more important stuff to take care of.
I'm going away for the weekend ( unexpected) and on Monday I hope to be doing my first fish shipment of some baby plecos.

 

[msjinkzd]

Honey gourami are wonderful, I had a m/f pair for several years and really enjoyed them. They are very docile fish. I have pictures of both sexes if you would like to see them.

The females are rounder bodied and have a brown lateral stripe. They are also slightly larger and a more washed out/pale yellow.
Males have a pointed dorsal fin, a more "beaky/pointed" face, and are a very vivid yellow. Often when in breeding colors tehy will get signifant peppering along the underside of their throat to a full black/brown throat.

Here is a pair of mine before they hit full maturity, the female is on the left:

 

[Eupterus]

Nice, thanks for the pics. It's going to be critical for me to at least not get two males in the size tank I plan to house them in I think?.

 

[msjinkzd]

really they are pretty docile and I doubt even with 2 males you woul dhave a huge amount of issues. In fact, my female was more of the agressor. Just as an aside, they definitely like an area of low flow and often would hang out at the surface behind my spraybar where the current was the gentlest so you may want to make sure you deflect your discharge for them.