Royal Grammas (Gramma loreto) are great reef fish. I never have reef tank that I did not put in a group of RG in after a few months. My current group of 5 RG has been in my tank since 1999. RG are Protogynous hermaphrodites (dominate member of the group change sex from female to male) they live in loose group and have being breeding for the last 2.5 years in my tank. They have sexual dimorphism where the males are larger and the ventral fins on the males are longer and do not have a sharp point while the female RG have shorter that ended in a sharp point. The above observations by myself have not been reported by any literature on these fish as far as I know. Males will fight to the death of one. It happened in my tank when the first male I got was sick with some kind of parasites and was not able to fully excert dominace over the group. One of the female change to male. He then killed the older male. I then put another small RG into the tank to keep the group number at 5. They live is a loosely group with each sleep separately in their own den. They return to the same cavity each night to sleep and will occasionally change location when they fine another to their liking. The male will make a nest by bring bits of algae into his den. He entices the female into his den to lay eggs by swimming up to her shaking his body and then turn to swims to his den. He does this repeatedly until she follows him into his den. The pair deposits the egg mast inside the den of the male. I was lucky to be able to actually observed the egg mast for a while when the den of my male RG was in an easily viewable spot for a while. The male the stay around the den and guard the eggs until they hatches about one week later. I was able to observe the male carry the larvae in his mouth and spitted them upward into the current one time (in six years of observing my RG) during the night. It was about 3 hours after the light turn out at the time. Male RG do not incubate the eggs in their mouth because they will eats though out the incubation period.
RG are easily adapted to aquarium life and eats meaty type food. They easily loses color in captivity unless fed a variety diet enhance with vitamins/color food. If you keep them in group, they are very active and out swimming about all the time. They get along great with a variety of fishes in my 450-gallon tank included Orchid Dottybacks (breeding pair), Yellowtail Blue damsels (breeding trio), Clown gobies (breeding group of five, two yellow and three green), Ocellaris clowns (breeding trio), Banggai Cardinals (breeding pair), Marine Betas (breeding pair), Mandarin dragonette (breeding pair), Yellow shrimp goby (single), angels and tangs.
Good luck, you won’t need much luck to keep them successfully, if you decide to keep these jewels. They are very popular and deserve every bit of their popularity.
Minh Nguyen
RG are easily adapted to aquarium life and eats meaty type food. They easily loses color in captivity unless fed a variety diet enhance with vitamins/color food. If you keep them in group, they are very active and out swimming about all the time. They get along great with a variety of fishes in my 450-gallon tank included Orchid Dottybacks (breeding pair), Yellowtail Blue damsels (breeding trio), Clown gobies (breeding group of five, two yellow and three green), Ocellaris clowns (breeding trio), Banggai Cardinals (breeding pair), Marine Betas (breeding pair), Mandarin dragonette (breeding pair), Yellow shrimp goby (single), angels and tangs.
Good luck, you won’t need much luck to keep them successfully, if you decide to keep these jewels. They are very popular and deserve every bit of their popularity.
Minh Nguyen
