The records a sparkling gourami accumulates quietly
A sparkling gourami is one of the smallest gouramis in the hobby, and its paperwork is easy to neglect precisely because the fish asks for so little day to day. After a move, update its details at your fish shop and with any aquatic vet, redirect food and supply deliveries to the new address, and rewrite the tank's sitter and emergency sheet. If the old details sit untouched, the failure only surfaces later — a delivery of frozen food thawing at the old house, a sitter following an instruction sheet written for a different kitchen and a different neighbour.
Document the new water for a soft-water fish
Sparkling gouramis come from still, leaf-stained shallows and do best in soft, acidic water, and they are small enough that a shift in supply shows in their behaviour within days — less croaking and display, duller spangling, more time hidden low among plants. Test the new home's tap water for pH and hardness and write the results into the gourami's notes beside the old house's readings. That written comparison is the paperwork that turns a vague worry after a move into a specific fact: the supply changed by this much, in this direction, and the fish's behaviour changed with it.
Count the group and note breeding behaviour while you can
In a planted tank, sparkling gouramis are heard as often as seen — the males produce a faint croaking or clicking sound — and an accurate headcount is genuinely difficult. The drained-down move is your chance: record how many fish you have, how many show the brighter male colouring, and whether any male was tending a bubble nest under a leaf or at the surface before the move. A nest noted on paper tells a future sitter or vet that eggs or fry may be present and the surface should not be disturbed, and an accurate count stops a slow, unnoticed loss of fish from being mistaken for shyness.
Rewrite the helper sheet for a fish that hides when stressed
The new sitter sheet needs your new address, the new local emergency contact, and expectations written for this species: a sparkling gourami may vanish into the plants for a day or two after any disturbance, feeds on very small foods taken mid-water and at the surface, and should be confirmed present at feeding time rather than searched for by moving decor. Add the practical geography of the new home — where the food is kept, which sockets run the filter and heater, where the spare heater lives — because a helper working from an old sheet will look in cupboards that no longer exist.
Update shop accounts and plan for the new area
Register the new address with your fish shop, and if you have moved away from it, find and note which shop near the new home stocks the small frozen and live foods this fish eats; a sparkling gourami's fine foods are not stocked everywhere. Tell any aquatic vet or maintenance service the same new details, and if a service visits the tank, update its access notes for the new property — parking, entry codes and where the tank now stands in the house.
Gathering the group count, the water comparison, the nest note and the rewritten helper sheet into a single record is the job KinsLe's Pet Passport does for a sparkling gourami, keeping its paperwork as one packet that moves with the fish.