Royal grammas spawning?

[RobertK]

I have a pair of captive bred royal grammas that have been in the tank together for about 1.5 years. They were pretty small when I got them but have grown quite a bit. One of them is considerably larger and I presume is male. He has always been the more active of the two, spending more time swimming out in the open than the smaller one. Last few days he's been MIA and I feared he might have died. But then I saw him swimming with the smaller one for a minute a couple days ago, then he went MIA again. Today I found him hiding in a flower pot that I use to hold my frogspawn in. He came out and swam one lap around the tank with his mate, looked fat and healthy, then went back in the flower pot. He grabbed a few pieces of food that floated by the flower pot at feeding time (usually he feeds eagerly with the other fish). Does this sound like spawning behavior? I don't know if I can keep the babies alive as it is a 60 gallon reef tank with 9 fish.

 

[Louis Z]

Yes you have a pair! No you would need to rear the fry in another tank . If you want to really raise them , you would need to isolate the pair in a separate tank and be able to capture the babies gently and isolate them again in another tank . Power heads , pumps and any other moving mechanical part will suck them in and chew them apart Raising fry is a whole another thread . You can research how to raise micro algae , rotifers , copepods , and hatching brine shrimp . First then tackle rearing the fry .

 

[RobertK]

Yes you have a pair! No you would need to rear the fry in another tank . If you want to really raise them , you would need to isolate the pair in a separate tank and be able to capture the babies gently and isolate them again in another tank . Power heads , pumps and any other moving mechanical part will suck them in and chew them apart Raising fry is a whole another thread . You can research how to raise micro algae , rotifers , copepods , and hatching brine shrimp . First then tackle rearing the fry .

Thanks, thats good to know! Don't think I can handle raising the fry right now, but maybe if they keep this up I'll give it a try!

 

[Louis Z]

That was the other solution to getting a pair . Start them out young together . That is difficult to do if you are working with wild caught and don’t know the ages . So AC is the only way one would know if they are young .

 

[RobertK]

Actually I got them a few months apart. The first one I got went MIA and was presumed dead, so I got another one. Two months later I found the original one alive and well in the overflow!

 

[Louis Z]

I have got a starry blenny and a blue/gold dottyback in my overflows . I have to keep putting food in there . Difficult to get them out . They both are slippery as all get out . Blenny is so good at camouflage I loose him all the time