HELP- Royal Gramma acting strange

[ZR2]

I have had my royal gramma for almost a year now in a fluval evo 13.5 and he has always been healthy and a good eater until recently. The last few weeks I noticed he has been hiding more, not coming out to eat, and his color looks dull. He also has be swimming along the sand bed and laying on his side or stands on his nose in the corner of the tank. For some reason my OC clown has started nipping his tail fin. Which is odd because the two have always gotten along great and used to swim with each other all the time. Not sure if it’s too late, wondering if anyone else has experienced this? 
 

Now he has been lodging himself in the rocks to hide. He does not appear to have any white spots and I do not see any heavy breathing. It looks like he has some sand on his face because he has been swimming through the sand. 
 

The colors in this picture look better than in person.

[A.m.P]

It's getting bullied, you might not be seeing all of the aggression, but that's a posture a fish takes when it has nowhere to run and the drab-colors are a stress response - your clown is getting bigger and apparently becoming much more aggressive. You might not have enough caves and other line-of-sight breaking areas for the fish to run to, but if the clown is actually aggressive (which it sounds like it may be) and not just defending a 5" square of turf it might not help at all to attempt adding any. (especially since this has been going on for weeks, which also means that it might be unlikely to "sort-itself-out")

I'd be willing to bet that if you net the clown and put it in a breeder-box/net the gramma will be back out in the open and eating again within 24hrs.

[Tamberav]

Sometimes fish will attack other fish they know are weak or sick however Amphrites is right in that it could also be the clown causing this problem. I think Isolating the clown is a good idea as a test.

 

Does he seem not to be able to balance properly? Just ruling out potential swim bladder problem.

[A.m.P]

Ah, hadn't even crossed my mind, my guess was that the gramma was being kept from the surface and so was digging for pods or scraps in the sand and hiding in corners to keep visibility down. (basslet/grouper things lol)
I wonder if they got in a scuff and its' swim bladder was injured or if it could have happened for other reasons, I love when people with more experience weigh-in because to say I miss things is to give myself wayyy too much credit lol.

[ZR2]

48 minutes ago, Amphrites said:

Ah, hadn't even crossed my mind, my guess was that the gramma was being kept from the surface and so was digging for pods or scraps in the sand and hiding in corners to keep visibility down. (basslet/grouper things lol)
I wonder if they got in a scuff and its' swim bladder was injured or if it could have happened for other reasons, I love when people with more experience weigh-in because to say I miss things is to give myself wayyy too much credit lol.

Thanks everyone for the advice. Just bought a breeder net to put the clown in. Hard to tell if the gramma is winning weird because he keeps hiding. The other night I heard a lot of noise in the tank and turned the light on and saw nothing. Could have been a fight. I will provide updates and hopefully the royal will pull through. Not sure what to do if he does because I don’t want to get rid of one of them. 

[ZR2]

The royal gramma is still alive and IMO the coloring looks much better since separating the clown which I still have in the tank but he is in a breeder net to keep him away from the royal. The royal is still hiding in the caves and occasionally moves over to the other rock. My concern is I have not seen the fish come up to eat when I feed everyone else. Not sure what to do, but the royal seems to be a bit more relaxed since separating the clown. I am not sure what brought this. The clown has not really grown at all recently and always got along well with the clown. 

[Tamberav]

I am not sure how long you have had the clown but they become aggressive with age and individuals are vary. 

 

My female clown is 5ys now and was pretty well behaved for awhile but she will now kill fish if kept with her in a smaller tank. I could only add aggressive fish with her in the 20g. Some clowns will go as far as to grab other fish and feed them to their anemone. 

[A.m.P]

Damselfish are dicks, Clowns are sweet until they get older, then they make other damsels look friendly. (Except for Maroons, they start nasty and get worse lol) 
You may have inadvertently just convinced me to go for the aggressive damsel tank after all Tamberav... So many options just don't matter if you lose the ol' engineer's 50/50 : 90 and your clown turns into a little turbo-cichlid.

[Tamberav]

2 hours ago, Amphrites said:

Damselfish are dicks, Clowns are sweet until they get older, then they make other damsels look friendly. (Except for Maroons, they start nasty and get worse lol) 
You may have inadvertently just convinced me to go for the aggressive damsel tank after all Tamberav... So many options just don't matter if you lose the ol' engineer's 50-50-90 and your clown turns into a little turbo-cichlid.

 

I kept my clowns in the 20g with a large starkii damsel, midas blenny, and a BIG XL royal gramma. I had to swap a few fish to find the right 'group' that worked.

 

Everyone (except the filefish and the large wrasses) gets a little chase in the 80g but its not a big deal since the tank is big. It is also pretty populated so mama clown can't really single one fish out. I think the filefish just dont look like fish to her cuz they weird 😛

[Tired]

When you say "everyone else", what else do you have in this tank? It's a pretty small tank to have multiple potentially aggressive fish in.

[ZR2]

9 hours ago, Tired said:

When you say "everyone else", what else do you have in this tank? It's a pretty small tank to have multiple potentially aggressive fish in.

I have the clown, royal, and 2 small neon blue gobies. Snails, 3 crabs, and a shrimp. Looking for suggestions at this point on what to do?

[ZR2]

14 hours ago, Tamberav said:

I am not sure how long you have had the clown but they become aggressive with age and individuals are vary. 

 

My female clown is 5ys now and was pretty well behaved for awhile but she will now kill fish if kept with her in a smaller tank. I could only add aggressive fish with her in the 20g. Some clowns will go as far as to grab other fish and feed them to their anemone. 

I have had the clown for almost a year 

[A.m.P]

Damsels are weird and clowns aren't too bright, you could try heavily re-working the scape and waiting a week or so to reintroduce the clownfish. That might break up old territories and confuse the bugger enough to quell some aggression, but there's no guarantee it will work or be permanent.

Worse yet some damsels might take out their frustration on livestock, from shredding corals, to beating on anything close to them, or even claiming and trying to defend the whole-tank as their territory.

 

It really depends on the individual, some clowns never get aggressive or "mean" to begin with and unfortunately nobody can tell you whether yours will settle down either.

[ZR2]

3 hours ago, Amphrites said:

Damsels are weird and clowns aren't too bright, you could try heavily re-working the scape and waiting a week or so to reintroduce the clownfish. That might break up old territories and confuse the bugger enough to quell some aggression, but there's no guarantee it will work or be permanent.

Worse yet some damsels might take out their frustration on livestock, from shredding corals, to beating on anything close to them, or even claiming and trying to defend the whole-tank as their territory.

 

It really depends on the individual, some clowns never get aggressive or "mean" to begin with and unfortunately nobody can tell you whether yours will settle down either.

Yeah I was warned about damsels and have stayed away from those. The royals coloring looks better, but he is still hiding in the caves and I have not seen him come up for food. I am sure the clown is loosing its mind in the breeder net haha. Not sure what to do because I have not had this fluval evo tank for a year yet and really like the tank, so upgrading to a bigger tank would be a big hassle.

[Tamberav]

I would squirt a little food where he is hiding to see if he will eat that way.

[Tired]

Very likely you're going to have to get rid of one of those fish.

 

Target-feed the gramma with something good and nutritious, like frozen mysis.

 

Rearrange the rockscape, being sure the gramma has plenty of places to hide, then reintroduce the clown. If the clown keeps attacking it, get rid of one. 

[A.m.P]

Clownfish are damselfish, and they're some of the meanest and most aggressive damselfish out there to boot. People give them a free-pass because nemo and their smaller-territories, but look at their body-shape. They're an insanely-thick and muscled damselfish with even bigger jaws and teeth, they're not designed to be peaceful lol - we just get lucky and, more often than not, they don't do as Tam mentioned and literally-drag our other inhabitants into the anemone as food.

Worth mentioning it might take a week or more for the Gramma to start behaving more-confidently if it was being bullied, even if the clown is in the breeder net, and that behavior certainly looks like it may have been the case.

I would let things settle down for a while and see if you can't get it eating and confident again before re-arranging the scape, and then I would let it establish territory for a week or so before re-introducing the clownfish.

[ZR2]

52 minutes ago, Amphrites said:

Clownfish are damselfish, and they're some of the meanest and most aggressive damselfish out there to boot. People give them a free-pass because nemo and their smaller-territories, but look at their body-shape. They're an insanely-thick and muscled damselfish with even bigger jaws and teeth, they're not designed to be peaceful lol - we just get lucky and, more often than not, they don't do as Tam mentioned and literally-drag our other inhabitants into the anemone as food.

Worth mentioning it might take a week or more for the Gramma to start behaving more-confidently if it was being bullied, even if the clown is in the breeder net, and that behavior certainly looks like it may have been the case.

I would let things settle down for a while and see if you can't get it eating and confident again before re-arranging the scape, and then I would let it establish territory for a week or so before re-introducing the clownfish.

Thanks to everyone for the advice, I really appreciate it and I am going to go with @Amphrites advice to start and see how it goes. 
 

I never knew that clowns were in the damsel family because like you said you don’t think about clown fish being aggressive. I have heard royals can be quite aggressive so it does surprise me that it lets the clown pick on it. 
 

I will try some mysis and hopefully the royal will eat. I used to always use mysis but it was not as easy as flake food. 

[Tired]

Royals are territorial. They pick a cave and don't let other fish into their cave. But they tolerate other fish outside said cave, which is why you can keep them with tankmates.

Clowns vary. Some just defend a tiny patch of territory, some defend a large patch, some take offense to anything in the tank. The unfortunate thing is, it's not just variation between species, it's between individuals. And having a pair of them (like you really should, they do best in pairs) only complicates things by essentially doubling the chasing ability of the territory's defenders. 

[A.m.P]

I'm not really convinced they need to stay in pairs, if anything it seems like keeping them separate gives the individual a longer-lifespan as the females tend to outlive (not the least of which by killing, especially with maroons) the males by considerable margins.

[ZR2]

Update: I think the royal is taking a turn for the worse. The clown is still separated from the royal but he is still hiding in the caves. The coloring on his one side looks good but the other side has many white patchy areas and he keeps opening and closing his mouth a lot. My cleaner shrimp tried to clean him the one day and he was not having any part of it. I did buy a larger table to give the fish a little more room but not everything has arrived yet for me to do the transfer. Anyone have any idea what could be going on? 
 

 

[Tamberav]

hard to tell by the pic 😞 I am guessing some sort of injury that may have also progressed into an infection since it is on one side. Mine will get missing or roughed up scales sometimes from the rocks.

[ZR2]

12 minutes ago, Tamberav said:

hard to tell by the pic 😞 I am guessing some sort of injury that may have also progressed into an infection since it is on one side. Mine will get missing or roughed up scales sometimes from the rocks.

Yeah it is hard to tell, I just had to move him into the breeder net and put the clown back in the tank because now my strawberry crab is going after it and was trying to pin it in the corner. Have had the gramma for almost a year, sucks to see it suffer and not know what to do. 

[Tired]

The best thing you can do for it is minimal stress and clean water. Don't expect the cleaner shrimp to be of any help, either.

[OrlandoV]

How is the RG doing?