Gouramis dying

[goldi7]

I have had two kissing gouramis for at least four years. They have grown quite large. About two weeks ago I purchased a 55 gallon aquarium and placed two angel fish, 2 golden gouramis, four neons, two algae eaters, and a small shark in with my kissing gouramis. Yesterday morning I found one golden gourami dead. This morning I found the other golden gourami dead and when I returned home this evening, one of my kissing gourami was dead. The remaining gourami has something on its side that looks like a red pimple. Does anyone know what is causing these beautiful fish to die?

[Dog Dancer]

Sorry to hear about your gouramis. They are great fish. Unfortunately it has been about 35 years since I had gouramis and I'm totally out of touch with their diseases anymore. Good luck to you infinding out though. If you could get a pic maybe you could take it to your fish store.

[14+kitties]

How big/old are your angels? They have been known to attack and kill other fish. Especially if the tank is overcrowded.

[Dog Dancer]

14+ that's true, I completely forgot about that. My larger fish used to eat the smaller ones all the time. I had gouramis and silver dollar fish in one tank once and came home one night and had gouramis and spare change ! Well I laugh now, but it's true. This sounds like a fairly big tank though, it doesn't sound like a crowding issue to me. That said, it could just be somebody is being aggressive as you said.

[MyBirdIsEvil]

You placed quite a few fish in an apparently brand new tank. It could be related to your tank cycling. Have you tested your water parameters? (ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and ph). If not, it is imperative that you do so, either by taking some water to a fish store that has a liquid test kit, or buying your own liquid master test kit. Without testing the water you cannot eliminate it as the cause of your deaths.

The red pimple could be from infection (often due to water quality issues) or the fish picking on each other, but if fighting caused your fishes deaths you would have seen some injuries.

Your tank is pretty overstocked, even if it was established, and is newly set up and possibly not cycled completely. Between the two that is probably the cause of your deaths. 55 gallons is not very big considering you have added some fish that you stated are fairly large, and some that will eventually grow to a decent size.
Also, I'm not sure how much you feed, but overfeeding will foul the water pretty quickly.
Btw what kind of "shark" and "algae eaters" did you get? These common names refer to several different species, some of which can be aggressive or not compatible with your other fish, and some of which grow much too large for your aquarium.

If you want to try a website that is completely devoted to fishkeeping, I also frequent aquariacentral.com, and you would get a lot more advice there. There are not too many people on pets.ca that are fish enthusiasts. If you were looking for cat or dog advice it would be a completely different story.