The gold honey gourami is a paler amber than the sunset line, closer to butter than to red. It is a peaceful, easy fish for a calm, planted community tank.
Did you know
The gold line all but erases the broad brown stripe that a wild female honey gourami wears down her side. That stripe is the quickest way to pick a wild-type female out of a mixed shop tank of golds.
Caring for the gold honey gourami
Keep gold honey gouramis in a group of four to six, with more females than males to spread out any chasing. Give them at least 20 gal (75 L), heavily planted. Add floating plants on top and tall stems for cover, and leave open swimming room in the middle.
Hold the water at 72 to 82°F (22 to 28°C) and a pH of 6.0 to 7.5. Keep the flow gentle so the surface stays calm for breathing and nest building. A tight lid traps a warm, humid pocket of air, which protects the labyrinth organ from cold room air.
Feed small flakes, micro pellets and frozen foods such as daphnia or brine shrimp. Gold honey gouramis are peaceful and a bit shy, and they spend most of their time in the middle of the tank. Keep them with other calm, small fish, and skip anything fast, nippy or big enough to bully them.
They build bubble nests. The male builds and guards the nest, and breeding them is moderately tricky.
Good to know
Gold honey gouramis carry far less dark pigment than wild fish. The female's side stripe and the male's dark throat go faint or absent. The eye stays dark, which puts this line in the reduced melanin bracket rather than albinism. Fish from different farms sit at different points on that scale. Suppliers differ mainly in how deep the amber runs and how much brown is left on the females. Some fish keep a ghost of the stripe. Color is even across both sexes from a small size, so shop juveniles look much like the adults they turn into. Shops list it as gold or dwarf gold honey gourami.
In the wild
The gold honey gourami is one of the selectively bred ornamental strains of its species, listed by Seriously Fish alongside red and sunset. It is not a wild pattern, and wild honey gouramis are brownish outside of breeding color. No breeder, country or decade is documented, so this is a hobby line of uncertain origin.
Weekly picks
Tank mates
The gold honey gourami is a peaceful, social species that keeps to the middle. These picks share a community profile with it, are safe together in both directions, and overlap on water type, temperature and pH.
3 in (7.5 cm)10 gal (38 L)72–81°F (22–27°C)
3.5 in (9 cm)26 gal (100 L)70–82°F (21–28°C)
3.5 in (9 cm)20 gal (75 L)72–82°F (22–28°C)
2 in (5 cm)16 gal (60 L)72–81°F (22–27°C)
2 in (5 cm)17 gal (65 L)79–88°F (26–31°C)
2 in (5 cm)12 gal (45 L)72–82°F (22–28°C)