Trichopodus leerii

This beautiful fish and aquarium hobby icon lives in the calm, shallow, soft waters of Malaysia and Indonesia. Its natural population is in decline due to habitat loss.

IUCN lists it as 'near threatened'.

If you have information about or footage of this fish in the wild, please reach out to us. 

This fish is beautiful, calm and hardy, which makes it perfect for a beginner, or for a community tank. It does grow a bit larger than most aquarium mainstays: up to 12 cm. They are not faster swimmers and should not be kept with neurotic or fin-nipping fish. They require warm, preferably soft water, but do fine on dechlorinated tap water towards a neutral ph. Should be easy to breed, but it is has not happened yet in our fishroom, even though we have kept pearl gouramis without interruption for over three years. Presumably, a large tank without flow or tankmates is required, with maybe 10-15 cm water in it, walk, soft, and perhaps tannin-stained. If the fry are anything like Macropodus or Betta fry, the will be tiny and require infusoria as first food.

Update 23 February 2023:

I filled a 14 liter plastic container 2/3 up with soft, tannin-rich water and raised the temperature to 28 degrees celcius. No filtration. Added some oak leaves, some of which floated. Introduced a pair of pearl gouramis. 24 hours later, the male had constructed a bubble nest. Another 24 hours later, there were hundreds of eggs. I then removed the female. The bubble nest disintegrated rapidly and I ended up with the eggs just floating under the water surface. Then I removed the male, too. 

Update 15 April 2023:

Of the above batch of fry, only six survived, I am not sure why. Those six also unfortunately did not make it, because I then stupidly moved them to another tank with Pseudosphromenus fry, which immediately hunted and ate them. I repeated the procedure described above and it work like a charm again: low water level, no flow, no other fish, high temperature, one male, one female, and leave the rest to them. Now, three weeks on, the hundreds of fry are still alive. I feed them a sort of powder shake and it seems to work.