Feeding Copper Band Butterfly

[Myka]

Try live blackworms. I order them from Petland here. They order them on Tuesdays and the worms show up on Wednesdays.

Next time, make sure you see the fish eat before you buy it. Lots of Copperbands will eat - probably 75% of them. That doesn't mean they will survive long term though. It is unusual for them to survive long term.

[dino]

I use frozen plankton and don't find to many fish can resist it

[crimper]

Originally Posted by LionfishJW

Thanks, Crimper!

As we know, copper band is a slow eater, how do you give the worms to it and not taken by other fishes? I tend not to give excessive food to prevent from polluting water.

I quarantine them with no other fish and make sure they are eating before adding to my display tank. I use a small pippet to make sure she is the first to get the food before other fish when they are added to the display until they learn to get food on their own.Turkey baster works fine.

[George]

I don't have experience with CBB but have trained a lot of so call "difficult" fish. A quiet, stable, and familiar environment is more important than the type of food. It takes longer time for some fish than others.
Also 4" is a big for CBB. Big fish is already fixed on certain foods and hard to train on new foods.
Good luck.

[Animal-Chin]

Keep at it! I trained both a copperband and a mandarin goby to accept frozen and both are really hard to train.

Use brine shrimp, they seem to be the food most will take first. Turn off all pumps and get the water to stop moving then using a turkey baster or pipette squirt a little infront of the fish. Maybe have it land on some rock so they can pick at it. Some fish don't like food in the water column and prefer to pick off rock (thus the copperbands big snout). Once they recognize frozen brine as a food source they'll probably start taking from the water when you do regular feeding.

My mandarin actually hides in a spot each time I feed and I puff some food in the little rock cave just for him.