What I did ...
Hi all,
I'm in the middle of rearing a batch of 200-300 blues gouramis. And figured I'd share what I've done this far to get them to spawn, and how I've cared for the fry (so far).
Getting them to spawn.
I have a 75 gal tank, 3 gouramis, and 15 or so guppies, with loads of plants (rooted and floating), snails, and ghost shrimp. I mention that because 75 gal is spacious for the amount of fish that I have, and the snails, live plants, & shrimp do a superb job in keeping the tank clean and healthy (I never have to clean the tank, and I only need to do a partial water change every few months)
Floating plants are key for the gouramis. Gouramis love to hide under floating plants, and they build their bubble nest in floating plants. I've had one Gourami make a bubble nest with no plant cover, but it was a crappy nest, and it didn't work out well for him.
For a few weeks prior to spawning, I kept the water level high (close to the top of the tank), the temp at ~74 F, and had the aquarium lights on about 16 hours of the day.
To encourage spawning, I dropped the water level by about 1/5. So the tank was 4/5 ths full. I raised the temp to ~80 F, and started keeping the aquarium lights on 18-19 hours a day. This all seems to kick in the spring / summer time feeling, and lets the gouramis know it's time to spawn.
Once they are 'in the mood', you will see the male gourami build a bubble nest, and the gourami pair will begin to court. They do all sorts of mating rituals, sometimes chasing each other, stroking each other, coupling and dancing (what I call coupling is like them forming a gourami yin yang, one's head to the other tail fin). The final act is accomplished with more of the coupling, they form a tight ball, they shake violently, a bubble of eggs floats to the surface, and the male chases the female away.
The male will take the eggs in his mouth and arrange them in the bubble nest. He also guards the bubble nest against other fish. I don't know when he fertilizes the eggs? So I actually left the eggs in the bubble nest for a day or two, under the male's care.
After two days I could actually see the eggs starting to twitch and form little tails. This is when I scooped up the nest and the surrounding plants. Luckily for me the plants were all separate lily pads. They were not rooted, nor bound up together, so they scooped up easily.
I had previously prepared a 10 Gal tank and adjusted it's temperature to be the same as the parent tank, no gravel, no filters, nothing on the tank bottom. I kept ~80 F because the fry will grow a little faster at that temp, but much warmer than that will kill them. I did this days before I transferred the fry, and at the time of transferring I scooped up the nest in plastic cups with brought over water, lots of tiny floating lily pads, and the fry from the parent tank.
The fry will live for a few days on their egg sacs alone. But after that you need some really tiny food for them, generally when the fry become barely free swimming (instead of just floating at the surface).
I've fed mine a few different things, don't know what they were actually eating because I put a little of each type of food in the tank.
1) Hardboiled egg yoke - Hard boil an egg, take a pea size pinch of the hard boiled yellow yoke, mush it with a teaspoon of water until it is in suspension, add a few drops of this into the tank. Over feeding this will foul the tank!
2) Coral / Filter feeder food - Weird I know, but it is essentially a bottle of phytoplankton starter. I just added a few drops every other day. They plankton is so small you can't see it, but the fry will.
3) Pepper grinder & normal flake food - Get a new and clean pepper grinder, set grinder to the smallest grain, I added flake food / baby freeze dried shrimp / slices of blood worm cubes ... then crank away! I actually ground up a little at a time, and added the ground food back into the grinder a second time. This worked to get all those foods into a powder form. Even thought the food looks like a powder, this is probably best for fry after they are a week or two old, and big enough to eat this kind of stuff.
I also have made the point to do very frequent water changes, 2 or 3 gallons (in a 10 gal tank), every 2 or 3 days. I use air tubes to siphon water in and out of the tank, slowly and gradually. A bubble stone on the air tube used to siphon out the tank water will prevent the fry from getting siphoned away. At the same time, I siphon fresh water back into the tank through another air tube. This keeps the water clean, and the turbulence low, and the temperature stable.
After the fry were 2 or 3 days in the 10 gal tank, I added a bubble stone and let a real fine stream of air bubbles in the tank. Just enough to keep some of the food floating around for the fry to see. Instead of letting the food rot on the bottom, I tried to stir up the existing food instead of continuously dropping new food into the tank.
That's pretty much it.
:O)
Hope this helps someone interested in spawning gouramis!
Shane
The 10 gal tank should be fine as a start, I fed my babies the way over-priced liquid fry food for the first week or so, then started feeding the baby brine shrimp and powered flake. I fed them 3X per day and did daily water changes- they were in a 5 gallon tank. I've sold 48 of them and still have at least that many left, occupying 2- 20 gallon tanks. The death rate was very low-I've already decided to keep 6 of them and will be building a giant (200+ gallon) SE Asian biotope that will house the Gold Gouramis, Clown Loaches and some other fish-probably Harlequin Rasboras and Zebra Danios. Good Luck, Steve... Edit- I moved my fry-accendentally :0 - I'd placed some floating plants in my tank and 2 days later the males were chasing all the other fish off, so i took a bucket of treated water and pulled the disputed plants out of the tank. The next day I put the plants under some light and noticed that the plants were full of wigglers 
..End Edit