Danny, I think ALL butterflies will nibble on corals given the chance. Maybe an exception is the copperband, but I'm not sure about that. Haven't done a lot of research on the topic, but when I was at the lfs a few weeks back, I looked in the fish book. There was a whole page of butterflies that were not suggested for home aquaria because all they ate were corals.

reply
 

Oh well, the search continues...

Also, some of them get very large in the wild. For instance the CBB grows to 8". The pearl scale we had grows to 5.5" and our itty bitty latticed butterfly grows to 6". In the wild, that is. We'll see how big our guy gets in the 120g.

Does the CBB eat zoo's? is it a less aggressive butterfly in terms of coral munching?

While watching the tank this thread came to mind, and I realized my Red Sea Butterfly has never touched anything but aiptasia. That is why I got her, and I put rocks from the trigger tank in there and she goes nuts to eat the aips. But I have never seen her touch anything else in the tank.


They grow big tho.

Beautiful fish Bev. I would love to get myself a butterfly one day. I had read somewhere that they don't recomend getting them smaller than 3 inches and bigger than 5. But than again I don't think I could resist buying one if I saw one that size.

Gringos,

I bought my latticed butterfly from a local reefer. She'd had it for about a month and had to find a new home for it because it was eating her zoos :eek: After she sent me a pic of it and we discussed the fish over the phone, I agreed to buy it.

It took a few days before our new little fish got the hang of eating the local food served and with competing with the frenzied feeding of five chromis. It now seems to be gaining weight daily and is master of the tank, even though it is smaller than our largest chromis :biggrin:

I was only asking because I am looking into getting myself a butterfly. I would love to get him as small as possible. I love watching my fish grow. I will probably get the copperbanded I saw this week-end, if he is still there. Looked in goot shape too.

Gringos,

If you buy one, keep in mind that in the wild, copperbands grow to 8" long.