Freshwater Fish · Gouramis
Sparkling Gourami
Trichopsis pumila
The thumb-sized gourami you can actually hearIntermediate
- Lifespan
- 3-5 years
- Size
- Up to about 4cm (1.6in)
- Social needs
- Social; keep a group of five or six or more; quiet nano tankmates only
- Time
- 10-15 min daily; weekly water change
- Cost
- Low
- Diet
- Micropredator (micro-pellets, live/frozen daphnia, baby brine shrimp)
Overview
What is this animal?
- The sparkling gourami is one of the smallest gouramis in the hobby, a labyrinth fish barely 3.5-4cm long from the still ditches, marshes, and rice paddies of Southeast Asia — the Mekong and Chao Phraya basins and the Malay Peninsula.
- A brownish body spangled with rows of iridescent blue-green spots, red-and-blue-edged fins, and brilliant turquoise eyes give it its name.
- Its party trick is real sound: displaying fish produce an audible croaking or clicking by snapping enhanced tendons in the pectoral fins, and a settled group will chatter at each other across the tank.
- Do not confuse it with the closely related croaking gourami, Trichopsis vittata, which grows to nearly twice the length, or with the honey and dwarf gouramis already familiar to community keepers, both of which are bigger, bolder fish.
- This is a true nano species for a quiet, planted, dedicated setup.
- The intermediate rating is not about fragile health, because they are reasonably hardy; it reflects that they starve, hide, and fade in the average busy community tank, and only show their colour, confidence, and voice when the whole aquarium is designed around them.
Temperament
- Sparkling gouramis are peaceful, inquisitive, and endearingly interactive with each other, but they are timid with anything larger or faster than themselves.
- Keep them in a group of five or six or more, because lone fish tend to stay hidden while a settled group spreads confidence and triggers the croaking displays the species is known for.
- Males spar with spread fins and audible clicks, circling each other in brief, theatrical contests that almost never cause damage in a planted tank.
- Males also build small bubble nests, often tucked under a broad leaf rather than in open water.
- The safest stocking is a species tank, or company on their own scale: chili rasboras, ember tetras, pygmy corydoras, and otocinclus work well, while barbs, bettas, larger gouramis, and anything boisterous will bully or simply out-eat them.
- They may pick off shrimplets but generally coexist with adult cherry shrimp.
A good fit for
- Keepers who want a characterful centrepiece for a planted nano tank
- Anyone charmed by the idea of a fish that audibly croaks
- Quiet species tanks or nano communities of equally small fish
- Keepers ready to feed live and frozen micro-foods
- Fans of natural, tannin-stained, leaf-litter aquascapes
Common mistakes to avoid
- Adding them to a busy community where they hide and slowly starve
- Standard flake and pellets being too large for their tiny mouths
- Strong filter flow pinning them into corners
- Cold room air over the surface harming the labyrinth organ
- Keeping them alone or in too small a group, which leaves them shy and colourless
- Escaping through small gaps in the lid
Enclosure
Minimum 40 litres (11 US gallons) — for a group of 5 · 45 × 30 cm
Cannot be kept alone. The minimum is 5, and the space above is for that group.
- House a small group of five or six in a tank of at least 40L (about 10 US gallons, a base of roughly 45x30cm) as a working minimum, prioritising floor area and planted cover over height.
- Dense stem plants, leaf litter, and a layer of floating plants recreate the shaded, tannin-stained still water they come from and transform their behaviour.
- Keep the water at 24-28C (75-82F), soft and slightly acidic to neutral with a pH around 6.0-7.5, and use gentle filtration such as a sponge filter, because flow that barely registers for other fish will pin these into the corners.
- Like all gouramis they gulp air at the surface with a labyrinth organ, so fit a tight lid that traps a layer of warm, humid air; cold room air over warm water is a classic way keepers damage them.
- Cycle the tank fully before they arrive and keep ammonia and nitrite at zero, with a weekly partial water change.
- Labyrinth fish will jump through equipment gaps, so close off cable cutouts in the lid.
Supplies
Setup
- Tank and stand
- Filter
- Heater and thermometer
- Substrate, plants and decor
- Liquid test kit
- Dechlorinator and starter supplies
Ongoing
- Quality tropical flake
- Floating and slow-sinking micro-pellets
- Frozen bloodworm, brine shrimp and daphnia
- Spirulina or vegetable flake
- Courgette for blanching
- Veg clip
- Fine net for removing leftovers
Safe substrate: Inert aquarium gravel · Fine, smooth sand · Aquasoil for planted tanks
Care routine
Daily
- Check temperature and equipment
- Feed
- Head-count and look everyone over
Weekly
- Check the air layer above the waterevery 3 days
- Top up evaporationevery 3 days
- Clean glass and clear algae
- Test the water
- Water change and gravel vacuum
Monthly
- Trim and thin the plantsevery 2 weeks
- Check supplies and reagent dates
- Rinse the filter media
Less often
- Replace chemical filter media (Carbon/Purigen)every 2 months
Vet: Quarterly review with a surface-air check — every 3 months
Top resources for more info
Independent creators and organisations we would send a friend to. We have no affiliation with any of them, and nothing here is sponsored. Links checked 2026-09-19.
YouTubers
Girl Talks FishCare how-tos by fish type, tank setup and beginner mistakesAquarium Co-OpSpecies care guides, filtration and fish health (run by a retailer)Prime Time AquaticsSpecies profiles, stocking and water chemistry explained plainly
Sites
Go deeper
Diet
- Sparkling gouramis are micropredators that hunt tiny invertebrates in the wild, and their mouths are genuinely small, so standard flake and community pellets are often literally too big.
- Use crushed flake or true micro-pellets as the staple and expect some individuals to refuse dry food entirely at first.
- Condition and colour come from small live and frozen foods: daphnia, baby brine shrimp, microworms, cyclops, and finely chopped bloodworm.
- A tank with leaf litter and mature plants also grows the microfauna they graze between meals.
- Feed small amounts once or twice daily and watch that every fish actually eats, because they are slow, deliberate feeders that lose out to anything quicker.
- Slow starvation next to faster tankmates is one of the most common ways this species fails.
Health
- This is a fairly robust little fish with no strong link to the iridovirus that plagues farmed dwarf gouramis, which makes sourcing less fraught than for that species.
- Most losses trace back to husbandry: chilled surface air, strong flow, poor water quality, or simply being outcompeted for food.
- Quarantine new arrivals for a few weeks, since wild-caught and farm imports can carry parasites, and internal worms show as a hollow belly despite eating.
- Watch for clamped fins, faded spangling, and constant hiding as early stress signals in a fish that should be out patrolling the plants.
- At this size a healthy lifespan is around 3-5 years, and stable temperature, clean water, and a low-stress tank are what get them there.
- There is little margin for error in medicating a fish this small, so prevention beats treatment.
Is your enclosure big enough?
Minimum volume40 litres (11 US gallons)
Minimum floor area1,350 cm² (209 sq in) of continuous, unbroken floor
As dimensions45 x 30 cm
Swimming length30 cm minimum. A tall tank of the right volume is still the wrong shape.
CompanyCannot be kept alone. The minimum is 5, and the space above is for that group.
Is this urgent?
In a fish tank the patient is usually the water. Test before you treat — dosing a healthy tank for a disease it does not have makes things worse.
Go now
Any detectable ammonia or nitrite in a stocked tankLarge water change now with dechlorinated, temperature-matched water. Stop feeding. Test again in 12 hours. Both are directly toxic. How toxic the ammonia reading is depends on pH and temperature, so the same number can be harmless or lethal.
NowFish gasping at the surface, or crowding the filter outflowIncrease surface agitation immediately, then test the water. Either the oxygen has crashed or the gills are being chemically burned. Both are hours-scale problems.
NowSudden deaths, more than one fish in a dayTest ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and temperature before doing anything else. Do not add medication yet. Multiple simultaneous deaths point at the water or the equipment, not at a pathogen.
NowToday
Flashing — repeatedly scraping against decor or substrateTest the water, then look closely for parasites. Irritation is either chemical or parasitic; the test tells you which before you medicate.
TodayWhite salt-grain spots over the body and finsBegin the appropriate treatment today and check the temperature. The parasite's life cycle is temperature-driven, and it multiplies with every cycle you wait.
TodaySoon
Clamped fins, hiding, or refusing food for more than two daysTest the water and review recent changes. Usually the earliest visible sign of a parameter drifting.
A few daysNever add a new fish to a tank that is not fully cycled, and never treat blind. A test kit is cheaper than the fish.
This is general guidance for a healthy adult, not a diagnosis. An exotics vet who knows your animal always overrides it — and the time to find one is before you need one.
What it really costs
Setup, monthly, first year and across a whole life, itemised and with the electricity worked out from the actual wattage. Published figures for the same animal disagree by a factor of four, so the calculator shows ranges rather than picking one.
Bedding and substrate
Substrate in an aquarium is a filter as much as a floor. Most of the biology lives in and on it.
Safe
Inert aquarium gravelRinse thoroughly before use. Grain size should be too large to swallow and too small to trap food.
safeFine, smooth sandCorrect for corydoras, kuhli loaches and anything that sifts. Their barbels wear away on sharp gravel.
safeAquasoil for planted tanksExcellent for plants, but it leaches ammonia for the first weeks. Cycle around it; do not stock into it.
safeBare bottomLegitimate for quarantine and grow-out tanks. Easy to clean, but it holds far less biological filtration.
safeWith a caveat
Crushed coral or aragoniteDeliberately raises hardness and pH. Correct for rift-lake cichlids, wrong for soft-water species.
with a caveatVery deep sand bedsAnaerobic pockets form below about 5 cm in still sand. Either keep it shallow or keep it stirred.
with a caveatPainted or coated gravelUsually fine, but coatings chip. Test a handful in a jar for a week first.
with a caveatNever
Sharp or angular gravel with bottom-dwellersWears down barbels and leads to infection in corydoras and loaches.
neverAnything containing metal, limestone of unknown origin, or shells in a soft-water tankSlowly alters chemistry in ways that are hard to diagnose later.
neverThis is our general list for freshwater fish. We have not built one specific to Gouramis yet.
My kit says 0.25 ppm. Is that dangerous?
A liquid kit measures total ammonia, but only the un-ionised fraction is really toxic, and that fraction is governed by pH and temperature — each whole pH unit multiplies it roughly tenfold. So the same reading can be nearly harmless in one tank and lethal in another; this works out which one you are in.
Compare with other animals
The same axes for every animal, side by side — the way the guides are written makes that a fair comparison rather than two articles.
Keep going
Gouramis, side by side
Same axes, same care guides — the honest way to choose between types.
See all Gouramis side by side →
