royal gramma

wickett

New Member
Help!!!!!!!
i had a royal gramma in my tank alone and when i added a couple of per clowns they were doing good. after two days one of the clowns had stopped eating and could see stress setting in. i turned off the light and was watching the fish swim and it was then i saw the gramma open its mouth and attack the clowns. i know i have read how peaceful the are supposed to be but i saw it myself. within 3 mins. he hit him 4 times. i put the gramma in my quarintine tank but by mourning the one clown had died. :wit: what can i do with the gramma as i add more fish i dont wan't them attacked???
wick

70 gallon
ammonia 0
nitrite 0
ph 8.2
sal 1.023
temp 82
 

DaveK

Well-Known Member
Grammas are a good fish and usually peaceable. However, they can be territorial and they will defend their home. Usually they would just chase the clowns away, and not really hurt them.

A couple of things you can try. Rearrange the rock work and then reintroduce the gramma in a few days. The new layout makes it seek a new place to call home.

Your water temp is a little high. Often a slightly cooler temp, maybe 78, will keep the fish less aggressive.

When adding new tank mates, choose ones similar in size or larger than the gramma.
 

hma

Well-Known Member
Hi together, do the clowns have an anemone? Clowns without their symbiosis-partner anemone, a no go. My opinion. I even have Gramma together with pipefish and gobys, no problem at all.
 

Cougra

Well-Known Member
Clowns do not need an anemone to live a long happy life in a tank and will even breed without the anemone.

I had a royal gramma with two clowns for many years and although I saw the Royal Gramma posture around the clowns it's never actually hurt them and my clowns even flared back. I think that if you just rearrange the tank a little, distroying the gramma's territory the aggression will probably stop.
 

MotoReef

Member
Help!!!!!!!
i had a royal gramma in my tank alone...


Hi I had that issue with a VERY AGGRESSIVE and TERRITORIAL purple tang.

The usual methods of rock rearrangement, separation by barriers, mirror in tank, and even isolating the tang for 3 months to 'reset' their territorial brain did not help.
It would attack anything that came in as new as mortal enemy and chase it till it couldn't breath anymore, and slice their sides till they bled.
This purple guy was simply a terror to anyone new, no matter what size and color or shape.

What finally ended up working however was interesting.
I added a large blue tang that can fend for itself as an experiment as per some guy's advice who keeps big aggressive fish only tank.
The newly added Blue Hippo tang
(Paracanthurus hepatus) was about twice the size of the purple tang (Zebrasoma xanthurum).

What ended up happening was that very care-free Blue tang really didn't mind the constant flaring of the purple tang.
The purple tang just seemed to get tired of flaring at a large fish that wouldn't run from him, or be scared.

So I added the two other fish I intended originally from another QT tank, to this test QT tank, and the purple tang almost didn't care with the presence of the large Blue tang being so dominant.
Any few attempted chase by the purple tang would end quickly as soon as the fish came around a rock to see the blue guy. It would see the blue tang, stop, and turn around and calm down.

Soon after, the purple tang lost his aggression to all fish, new, so I'd removed the blue tang. The purple tang never really regained the aggression again to all residents. He might attack with another addition, but I know now, that if I have patience to do that process again, and borrow the big blue guy, I can reliably repeat that process again.

Perhaps your Royal Gramma just needs a "new karate Kid" on the block to curb the aggression? Somebody big, bold, and mild mannered with defense skills of "Mr.Miyagi" :)
 
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