There's No One Quite Like Gramma!

Exquisitely beautiful and reef-safe, all the grammas are available in the hobby with varying degrees of regularity — and with price tags ranging from around £25 into the thousands! Discover what makes these little fish so special.

- Tristan Lougher

There aren’t many marine fish that tick as many boxes for reefkeepers as the grammas — and certainly not with a range restricted to the Tropical Western Atlantic and Caribbean. These diminutive basslets make up a small collection of species; only five grammas are currently described but almost certainly more await discovery and there are anecdotal accounts of sightings of potentially new species in deepwater locations in the Caribbean/Tropical Western Atlantic. But the current members of the genus offer an astounding amount of beauty and interest for aquarists to take advantage of.

All of them meet most aquarists’ requirements for interest and compatibility with aquarium life and most display wonderful colours. They are one of those rare groups of ornamental marine fish that are almost too good to be true; in which every species is desirable in one way or another. If there are new species out there let’s hope that they live up to the very high standards already set by their congeners.