Fish of the Week: Gramma loreto,the Royal Gramma

[Anonymous]

Welcome All Reefs.Org Members!

This is a weekly, or thereabouts, feature, called 'Fish of the Week' !

we would like you all to post any pics, experiences, photo's, etc. about that particular species, in this 'mini-forum'

good experiences, and bad ones, too-are equally welcome! (but i'd prefer to see constructive answers/solutions/innovations to problems encountered, rather than 'i just returned the bugger to the lfs' )

any tips, or special advice, on how you dealt with any special issues that species involves, would also be most appreciated, as would photos,too!


the idea is to help your fellow hobbyist via your experience, and knowledge, in the captive husbandry of fish you keep, because they turn you on, and hopefully, this wil help other hobbyist's life be made easier, as well as the fishes, too

this week's is the colorful and hardy:

Gramma loreto-commonly known as the Royal Gramma

any photo's you'ld like to share, anecdotes, husbandry tips, breeding experiences, compatability issues,etc. will be welcome!

Have Fun, and respect each others opinions/experiences



AND:

an added fyi-

as these threads are pulled down each week to make room for the next weeks species, they will get archived, in the fish archive


thanx, mods/admins

 

[Anonymous]

Hey, great idea! Wish I'd thought of it.

Hey wait, I did..

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthrea ... yal+gramma

Check the archives/etc on RC and you will find many more FOTW threads. Might save you some time.

Brian

 

[AllenF]

Right but since its such a great idea all the more reason to do it here!

Wouldn't you agree? :lol:

Good ideas (like dethroning tyrants) are worthy of duplication, hence the motivation to do it here!

 

[Anonymous]

ok folks: :roll:

the only posts i'll personally tolerate on these fotw threads are ones that are relevant to the topic at hand

i.e.-personal experiences with the keeping of the fotw in an aquarium

let's keep it at that, ok?

or, i'll ask the mods/ops to close the thread

 

[AllenF]

Post edited.

Sorry about that, I go to extreme examples to illustrate minor points.

Seems like a good idea to me and I thought I would defend it.

My mistake


Hopefully I will have somthing to post here soon. Im going searching for this very specimen when I get off work today.

 

[tendar]

I have had to of these fish over the last 3 years. My first one that the pic is of I had for 2 years before taking down tank and when I sold some of the rock he was hiding in a piece and went with it unknown at the time or I would still have him. They are a great fish and do well in most any tank aggresive or community. They will defend a prefered hole or spot in the tank vigorously but they are all bark and no bite.
My new is very shy right now and only really comes out for food and spends most of the rest day hiding. I have had him only about a month so hopfully over time it will get over it and become more visable.

 

[wombat1]

Here's a link to some pics of our Gramma loreto pair:
http://reefs.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=27335
They're very shy as a pair, but become fairly active at feeding time. These 2 share a 180 with a sailfin, hippo, and kole tang, a bicolor angel, and two ocellaris clowns. We assume they're laying eggs but no effort has been made to find them or raise the offspring. Very cool and beautiful fish!

 

[Anonymous]

Hmmm

In retrospect, my post was tacky. Somedays it is best to take a break before engaging fingers and typing.

My apologies to Vitz and Shane, both for my post and my responses to them via email.

The royal gramma is a wonderful fish, btw I want several, but I am worried about their interraction with my anthias and fridmani. If anyone has mixed these species, speak up.

Thanks (and sorry!)

Brian

 

[JeremyR]

This is one of my favorite fish, along with it's cousin the blackcap. Unfortunately, these fish, along with many other carib staples are getting increasingly hard to aquire healthy. Over the last few years I"ve noticed a serious degradation in the quality of grammas and other carib fish which I blame on rampant use of quinaldine to catch fish, and extremely poor holding in haiti where most of the imports are coming from (prolly cuz they are cheap). I've asked why they aren't imported from other locales, and the answer I've gotten is that places like Belize aren't reliable.. they ship when they get around to it. The Haiti quality is poor, but they ship more reliably.

<sigh>

I think alot of grammas used to come out of puerto rico, but I thought I read on NOAA's page that quinaldine fishing was banned there. Could be wrong.

 

[wombat1]

Are captive raised grammas available?

 

[JeremyR]

Interesting reading:

http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/habitat/waters ... 090902.pdf

 

[Telochupoto]

I wish I could post something about them, but I have purchased two of them and they keep either dying or getting killed. I saw the first one getting harrased by a Domino Damsel I had, but I couldn't do nothing but turn off the lights and hope it would hide. I guess the Gramma didn't get the message and got his @$$ whooped. [Pardon my french]. The other is either MIA or someone's dinner during his stay in my tank; but one thing is for sure, I doubt I buy another one anytime soon.

 

[JeremyR]

The knowledge is available to captive raise grammas, but the explanation I've been given is that they spawn a few eggs a night over a period of time, rather than a whole bunch at once.. making it more challenging to raise commercial quantities.

 

[Anonymous]

Mine (her name is "Gracie") has a litte cove she calls her own, and has recently taken to digging it out to make it more spacious - she grabs mouthfulls of sand & spits it out on the neighboring rock. She also trims the surrounding red turf algea.

 

[Christyf5]

Hi everyone,
thought I'd post here too since the royal gramma is one of my favorite fish and I finally found one that was worth bringing home. I agree with JeremyR. The royal grammas I have seen lately are not in the best of health upon arrival at the LFS.

I had previously attempted a couple of grammas in my tank (one at a time) but never really had the most healthy specimens to choose from. The LFS usually got quite a few in at a time and mentioned that they didn't ship well as they always seemed to have ratty fins and looked pretty roughed up. I would look at them and pick the best one from the batch and take it home. It would do well in my tank for a few days but inevitably turn up as hermit crab bait. After trying this twice, I had all but given up. Obviously I just couldn't keep a royal gramma. Then I hit a new LFS, these guys had perfect specimens! Net caught, not crowded in a tank with incompatible fish and since it was a family operation, the grandma loved to feed the fish and would do it several times a day with a heavy hand (she just loved watching them eat) so all the fish there were really fat and healthy looking. IMO this is key to having one survive in your tank (well, my tank anyway). Grammas are usually known as a semi-aggressive fish but I guess when placed in a new situation they can really get their butts kicked (ie. LFS). I had no problem getting mine to eat and it has eaten well from the start and is a total glutton. So far I've had him/her for almost a month now and he mostly sticks to one side of the tank (48G) but is becoming more adventuresome every week. He eats like a pig and gets a really fat gut after eating which always makes me happy.

my gramma:

Christy

PS. Hey Vitz! Good call on this fish of the week stuff and thanks for mentioning about where they're archived!

 

[Expos Forever]

Christy,

Was it from J&L by any chance? Not sure how close Coquitlam is to Nanaimo...Am considering getting one from them so I was just curious.

 

[M.E.Milz]

Hi everyone,
thought I'd post here too since the royal gramma is one of my favorite fish and I finally found one that was worth bringing home. I agree with JeremyR. The royal grammas I have seen lately are not in the best of health upon arrival at the LFS.

I have had the same experience. Based on their relatively low cost (as compared to other fish), and their rep for being hardy, I have brought home royal grammas 3-4 times over the past 6-7 years. But they have always ended up dead (usually, they just disappear). I have gotten these fish from different sources, and they were all healthy and eating before I brought them home. Moreover, they were added to different tanks at different times. The demise of these fish just does not add up. The only reasonable explanations are: 1) that royal grammas are not nearly as hardy as people think because of some change in collection procedures, or 2) that they are very sensitive to harrasement by more aggressive fish. With respect to the second point, I think the vast majority of fish we place in our reef tanks are more aggressive than grammas. In any event, I made the decision several years ago to never buy a royal gramma again.

But my fortunes have changed. I recently adopted a royal gramma from someone that was taking down their tank. And since adding him to my tank a few months ago, he has been happy, healthy and growing. However, I am at a loss as to why this gramma has faired better than the others. This tank has a fair number of aggressive fish (e.g., multi-colored and springer dottybacks, 6-line wrasse, angels and tangs), and has only been up and running for 9 months. This suggests that the first explanation is probably correct - that grammas are not nearly as hardy as people believe.

Mike

 

[CAT]

I just bought a gramma for my tank last week. Like many others, I believed they were hardy and pretty easy to keep when I bought it. :roll:

It seems to be doing great right now. I released him into a place that had a perfect cave a the bottom of the tank, he adopted it and has been excavating to give himself a rear exit as well. Great little fish so far - colorful, eats like a pig, doesn't bother the other fish and doesn't seem to get too upset when my bossy bangaii chases him - I think he's figured out that the bangaii is too slow anyway. :lol:

I did cover some holes I had at the back of the tank knowing that too many have gone carpet surfing.

 

[Anonymous]

Christyf5 wrote:

PS. Hey Vitz! Good call on this fish of the week stuff and thanks for mentioning about where they're archived!

it wasn't my idea-thank the ops/mods-they deserve the credit :wink:

 

[npaden]

I've been meaning to get a picture of my pair but haven't gotten to it and thought I would add to the post before it was done.

My pair don't seem that shy. Pretty much like any other small reef fish as far as habits go. They don't sleep in the same cave or anything though.

I see them out in the water column together sometimes and singly sometimes. No real mating behaviour that I've noticed.

I did have 3 at one time in a 415 gallon tank and these 2 ended up harrassing the other to death and I couldn't catch it so I'm assuming they are a pair now as they have been in the tank together for around 1 year.

FWIW, Nathan