Weird Royal Gramma Behavior...Help?

[ScarletReef]

Hello all,

A few days ago my normally fairly laid back Royal Gramma started being more aggressive, this coincided with the addition of a Orange Dotted Goby, who she seems to dislike, and a sand sifting starfish, who she doesn't seem to notice. The weird behavior is that first she stole the hidey-hole that the goby had picked, and now she is back on her side of the tank but has dug herself a HUGE burrow, and stays in it at least half of the day each day. Is this something they just sometime do, or is this as odd as it seems. I can't find any infor online about royal gramma's burrowing, and I have had her for over 7 months and this has never happened before. Has anyone else experienced this?

 

[jonewald]

Not sure about stealing the goby's little hiding hole, but it just sounds like they're working out a pecking order between them.
My gramma has done the sort of burrowing behavior you described though. He has a small burrow in the back of the tank that he prefers to sleep in. Guess he didn't like any of the crevices or tiny caves in my rockwork.
Is the gramma still eating or showing any signs its distressed? If not, nothing you described really sounds abnormal to me based on the behavior of my royal gramma.

 

[ScarletReef]

Ok, she doesn't seem to be distressed, and has not harassed the goby enough that he seems overly distressed or has stopped feeding. (I have a four foot tank and they, with the exception of the hidey-hole stealing episode, say on opposite ends most of the time.) I just had never heard of them burrowing, and she has stayed in the same hole in my LR since she was introduced up until she built her burrow. Good to hear it isn't serious.

 

[Elysia]

Gramma's don't take kindly to new-commers. I think that the den creation is probably something that happens when the fish reaches maturity -- most grammas are sold when they are still small, and they don't seem to start to create dens until six or so months into captivity. Algae is a big part of the den-ing process for mine -- he pulls off algae and creates walls with it. He will also take up mouthfulls of sand and spit them out elsewhere, although his dens aren't always built near the substrate. I had a royal gramma before, and a blackcap gramma now, and if one of the other fish had a particular hidding place, the grammas would take it over. They tend to be "bossy" fish.