Our New Itty, Bitty Friend

[Beverly]

Got this very tiny latticed butterfly last week for our 120g softie tank. It's finally eating up a storm after a shaky start competing with five blue/green chromis that have been in the tank for a couple of months and act like I never feed them :razz: Size comparison is about right, though I think the chromis is a little closer to the camera giving it a slightly larger appearance than it actually is. But make no mistake, the butterfly is really tiny, slightly less than 2" in length:

http://www.lostmymarblz.com/120gal-june-05-1.jpg

[Richer]

Thats a great looking butterfly. I look forward to seeing future pictures of it when it's grown up :razz:

-Rich

[OCDP]

Nice :cool: .. I bet he's pretty fun to watch.. small fish, maybe it's just me haha

[andestang]

Great score Bev. I have'nt seen a small Butterfly for ages.

[muck]

Great looking fish Bev... but are you sure hes not going to clean the tank of all your softies..?? :eek: :eek:

It requires a 70 gallon or larger aquarium that has numerous hiding places and peaceful community members. In the wild, it will prey on hard and soft corals, zoanthids, and/or anemones. If the fish is asleep or stressed, it will get a dark spot on the front of the body.

[Murminator]

Hey nice fishy :mrgreen: ..........not to rain on your parade but wasn't someone giving one away because it ate all their zoos?

[muck]

Hey nice fishy :mrgreen: ..........not to rain on your parade but wasn't someone giving one away because it ate all their zoos?
I think that was a Pearlscale..

[EmilyB]

Reminds me of my black back and pakistani. Yah, they will eat the softies/zoos for sure. Bah, it's a trade off for beautiful fish !
:biggrin:

[Beverly]

This fish was eating zoos in Cindy's tank, but I no longer have zoos in any tank. The 120g has GSP, brown star polyps, loads of zenia, shrooms, various macroalgae. The 120g also once housed a much larger pearlscale (RIP :cry: ) that did nibble the corals and MA in that tank. But the 120g was set up to house either a dwarf angel or a butterfly, so I don't mind the coral nibbling. Just love this little fish already :cool: Has the personality of our pearlscale, only much, much smaller :lilangel:

[danny zubot]

Hey Bev, are there any type of butterfly that don't nibble at zoos and other corals. I'd love to get one but not at the expense of my corals.

[Beverly]

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.

[danny zubot]

Oh well, the search continues...

[Beverly]

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.

[impreza]

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

[EmilyB]

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.

[Gringos]

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.

[Beverly]

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:

[Gringos]

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.

[Beverly]

Gringos,

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