mot ii
Member
We always thought royal grammas were supposed to be fairly peaceful and were excited when we added a really pretty one to our tank. At that time we also had a lawnmower blennie for about 3 weeks and it was doing great.
WIthin a few days of being in the tank the gramma staked claim on most of the LR areas as its own. When the blennie would venture near the rocks the gramma would chase after it with its mouth wide open (like an eel!) If it went near the grammas sleeping area...watch out! A couple of weeks later we added three pajama cardinals and the gramma went after them a few times, but since they tend to hang in the water and not go near the rocks the gramma eventually left them alone.
Last week I came home to a dead blennie. He was lying on the substrate in a little cavern area near where the gramma sleeps. At first we thought it had died of something else so we checked the water levels, etc and all was okay. We are fairly certain he was eating good (algae on the LR and tanks walls as well as supplement algae sheets.) And, all the other fish were fine.
A few days later we added a blue hippo tang to the tank and within 30 seconds the gramma was after it. It chased the tang around and kept bitting at it. We waited a bit to see if things would settle down but when the tang dove into a rock crevice to hide the gramma followed close behind. You could just see the panic of the tang The aggression just didn't stop and we could just tell it would probably be killed within a matter of minutes.
We debated on which to take out of the tank and settled on the gramma as we figured this aggression might appear with any other fish we introduced that wanted to be near the rocks. It was a frantic mess of trying to catch the gramma while it was trying to catch the tang! Once we caught it we took it back to the LFS. They were really surprised to hear how aggressive it was....
The bad news is that the hippo tang has developed ich and now we're dealing with that... maybe we should have kept the gramma and taken the tang back??!!
WIthin a few days of being in the tank the gramma staked claim on most of the LR areas as its own. When the blennie would venture near the rocks the gramma would chase after it with its mouth wide open (like an eel!) If it went near the grammas sleeping area...watch out! A couple of weeks later we added three pajama cardinals and the gramma went after them a few times, but since they tend to hang in the water and not go near the rocks the gramma eventually left them alone.
Last week I came home to a dead blennie. He was lying on the substrate in a little cavern area near where the gramma sleeps. At first we thought it had died of something else so we checked the water levels, etc and all was okay. We are fairly certain he was eating good (algae on the LR and tanks walls as well as supplement algae sheets.) And, all the other fish were fine.
A few days later we added a blue hippo tang to the tank and within 30 seconds the gramma was after it. It chased the tang around and kept bitting at it. We waited a bit to see if things would settle down but when the tang dove into a rock crevice to hide the gramma followed close behind. You could just see the panic of the tang The aggression just didn't stop and we could just tell it would probably be killed within a matter of minutes.
We debated on which to take out of the tank and settled on the gramma as we figured this aggression might appear with any other fish we introduced that wanted to be near the rocks. It was a frantic mess of trying to catch the gramma while it was trying to catch the tang! Once we caught it we took it back to the LFS. They were really surprised to hear how aggressive it was....
The bad news is that the hippo tang has developed ich and now we're dealing with that... maybe we should have kept the gramma and taken the tang back??!!
