Butterfly - Copperband Chelmon rostratus
 

Please provide your experience in this poll:

• Use the top 9 poll questions if your fish has passed away.
• Use the bottom 7 poll questions if you currently own this fish.
• Multiple polls are allowed.
• Select the best answer to the best of your knowledge.
• Adding comments or elaborating on the cause of death in a post is encouraged.

The options are as follows:

died within 0-3 months
died within 4-6 months
died within 7-9 months
died within 10-12 months
died within 13-18 months
died within 19-24 months
died within 2-3 years
died within 3-4 years
died after 5 years +
currently alive 0-6 months
currently alive 7-12 months
currently alive over 1 year
currently alive over 2 years
currently alive over 3 years
currently alive over 4 years
currently alive 5 years +

Could not get it to eat. It takes about 2 weeks for a fish to starve to death.

I could not get mine to eat either. I had a few feather dusters in my tank, so mine took 3 weeks to starve. I tried 2 kinds of mysis, bloodworms, live clams, and live mussles. Nothing worked. Very sad to watch a fish starve itself to death.

They are a sweet fish but mine just disappeared one day after 5 months. Not sure what happened?

Have had no long term luck with any butterflyfish, especially Copperbands. Too bad since they are Irene's favourite fish.

mine has been alive just over 2 years now....eats bloodworms, mysis, ocean plankton, clam, and aiptasia

copperband
 

I have had success so far with feeding fresh/frozen mussel or clam in the shell. I find that it doesn't do so well with just mysis and needs feeding 2-3 times per day, as it doesn't eat much at one time. Now that I feed either 1 mussel or clam each day, it gets a nice fat belly. I just buy them at superstore and throw them in the freezer and cut them open before they go in the tank. I feed a bit of flake to divert the other fish... anyway for me, this is the only way I've been able to get this fish to eat enough after it polished off all my aptasia and feather dusters...in a 200 gallon...it's done a great job. Just my 2 cents worth....Karen

I tried everything under the sun and the only thing my CBB ate was blood worms. He never touched any of the aiptasia in his quarantine tank. After 3 months he was looking well. I then put him in my tank and my damn damsels killed him before I could get him back into the quarantine tank.

I've had mine for about 3 months and he eats mysis and aptasia

Beautiful fish, real tough to watch him starve.

Had mine a little over 2 years.

When I bought it I had J & L staff feed mysis to the tank of Copperbands and I bought the one that was eating the best.

It did fine for a couple of years eating mysis and mussels and clams. Usually I would feed it once a day.

Unfortunately the CBB wiped out all my bristleworms and pretty well all the pods in the tank. The loss of pods IMO was responsible for the death of a Mandarin who had been doing fine for a long time.

After a couple of years I made the mistake of cutting back on feeding to combat some nutrient problems in the tank. I started feeding mysis only every 2nd day. After a couple of months I noticed the CBB was wasting away, by then it was too late to save him.

My over-all favourite fish ever for beauty, swimming ability and personality.

I had one in one tank to clean out little feather dusters and they were gone in just over a week then passed it on to a friend for his tank and it went carpet surfing after 3 days.
In my new tank recently I had one for about a month. It was eating some mysis but not enough, found it against the overflow.

I've tried two in the past in a 30gal and then a 50gal and they died within a month. Its been a few years so I decided to try one in my 120gal that I have now. I've had it since July and it eats feather dusters, spaghetti worms, aptasia, mysis and $90 acans. Dont worry I moved the acan. I'm going to try feeding mine some mussel/clam as well because I really want this fish to last. I really dont like buying these fish and watching them die, if it wasnt for the aptasia in my tank I would never buy one again.