How to form Royal Gramma pairs???

[veng68]

Just wondering if anyone has a good method of forming Royal Gramma pairs??? Also if anyone has had experiences with breeding this fish, I appreciate any info you'd like to share. Thanks.

Cheers,
Veng68

[Boom11]

Purchasing 5 Royal grammas will give you a good statistical chance at having a mated pair among them.

For breeding info, I recommend Martin Moe's books, such as:
-- "Marine (something) Begineer to breeder", and
-- "Breeding Pseudochromis ..."

B.M.

[veng68]

But aren't Royal Grammas very territorial? Someones going to get hurt unless I have a big enought tank. I was thinking of a 55 gallon (4 footer).

Cheers,
Veng68

[billsreef]

I would put a group into a large tank and watch very closely. Remove the ones at the bottom of the pecking order and you should end up with a pair. This is something to do when you have a few days off to able to monitor the situation closely enough to prevent any from being seriously injured.

[veng68]

Do you think a 4 ft tank would provide a large enough area? Right now it has a 4 inch sand bed and 40 lbs of live rock.

Cheers,
Veng68

[Boom11]

Veng68:

Regardless of tank size grammas will probably fight and make breeding impossible.

Once you id one male and one female, you should promptly return the rest to the fish store.

B.M.

[veng68]

Boom 11:

I wasn't going to try to keep all of the RG's in this tanks. I was wondering if this size tank would be ok for the pairing, ie. is there enough space for the other RG's to hide, while I'm trying to get a pair.

Cheers,
Veng68

[Boom11]

Veng68:

It should take less than 2 days to figure out who's who.
With some species (and some experience) you can spot a pair as soon as you put them in the tank.

You can set up the tank especially for this task, by using transparent boxes or partitions, and then move fishes around until you get a mated pair.
This will minimize fights and let you remove the "rejects" quickly.

B.M.

[billsreef]

veng68,

That idea of Boom11's of using partitions is an excellent one. The 55 is a good size to work with for this, but you do want to keep clutter to a minumum so that you can easily remove fish as necessary.

[veng68]

Thanks Boom11 & Billsreef for your suggestions.

Cheers,
Veng68

[OrionN]

I find Royal Gramma to be very peaceful and an excellent reef fish. I had 4 in my 100 g tank. I have a very peaceful tank. Initially I have only one Royal Gramma, and find that he is very shy. I added three more all much smaller that the initial one. They all live very peaceful in a trio group and one the other side of the tank.
My Rio pump broke and fried my tank with copper. I lost three of my Royal Gramma during that fiasco. Now I have one pair of Royal Gramma in my 400 g tank. They started to breed about 6 weeks or so ago. I don't know how the myth that Royal Grammas are mean and territorial was started, but this is not true. They are very peaceful and often live in-group. In nature they live as harem with one male and multiple females. You can easily get a group going by introduce one larger fish and several smaller immature fish. I have not read anywhere that they change sex, but this is possible. I have never had any Royal Gramma died due to fighting or because of harassments by other Royal Gramma.
BTW, the Royal Gramma I got is Gramma loreto, not Gramma brasiliensis. G. brasiliensis is meaner, larger, slightly less colorful and shold be keep single or in mated pair.
Scott Michael recommens that G. loreto be keep "in group of one medium-sized or large individual and two or more smaller specimens." I found this to be accurate. They are much less timid in group.



[Edited by Minh Nguyen on 04-05-2001 at 12:26 AM]

[veng68]

Thanks for your input Minh.

Cheers,
Veng68

[Los]

Jumping on this thread... I have to totally agree with Minh. I have seven, yes 7, of those wonderful guys and they have faired just fine. All turned into females save for one, who turned into a male. I have babies hatch just about every night and they thereby feed the rest of my tank with fry just about daily.

They are very peaceful and the seven don't even use half the tank! The all stay on one side of my 240.

Hope that adds to the pool of knowledge.

LOS

[Luis A M]

Los,
Very interesting input!.Can you see the nest?
Luis

[OrionN]

Another thing to consider is that many LFS keep RG separate one per tank. When this happen, often the RG change and become a male, even at small size. So be careful when you buy RG separate single per tank. They may fight to the death if they indeed change to being a male. How long does this take? i don't know.
Minh

[Los]

Luis-

Sure, I can see the nest. The guy built it in the corals and stuffed it with macro, gorgonians, etc. He also blocked other entrances to his cavern with pieces or rock, etc.

Pretty cool.

LOS

[acrohead]

There is a local HIGH END installation company (very expensive tanks, for example he has a 300+ gallon reef on display that he would install $50,000 +, and they do all the install and all the maintainence (with pagers set to the system monitors that page them when there is a problem) did I say expensive, the owner tells me that folks put these tanks on their credit card).... anyways..... in that tank their is 4 or more RG, and they seem to have paired up into two's and even when paths cross they dont seem to get too mad at each other.
But someone posted that if you want only one pair and your starting off with 6 fish in your 55, be ready to tear out all your rock to get the sneaky little guys out. They will find a hole to hide in and you will be tearing out all your rock and then trying to decide which two were the ones you wanted...
T
Stick with it

[OrionN]

acrohead,
I have a harem of 5 without problem. Now I have three in my tank. They live in group with one male and the rest females.
Minh

[acrohead]

Mihn,
I agree with you, and would encourage the original poster to keep all of them if they all live peacfully with each other.
I just wanted to warn him that trying to get any fish out of a 55 that he has put in the tank, will surely be a nightmare of taking rock out and trying to catch the unwanted ones. I think I must have been unclear, as I think if you do it right the guys should be fine. If they all start kicking each others butt, then you have to fish around and pull out all your display rock the catch the bad fish (one or more) that are fighting.
If he really makes a nice open rockpile i think that they will all have a place to call home until they figure out that they are all stuck together.
Thats why I said the tank at ADG has 4 or more in there and they all get along fine. And they are HUGE in size. I never knew a RG could get that big. As big around as a ballpark hotdog.
T

[Atticus]

I would put them in a smaller QT type tank with only a few places to hide. Try the large and small method, but just rotate one out if they do not enjoy each other's company.