Cooperband butterfly in a reef?

[Doug]

Mine, {the one Ben now has}, cleaned out all my aiptasia. He also ate and type of fanworms and I would assume pods. I know this because my fat old mandarin started to lose weight.

The copperband also ate frozen mysis and other frozen foods. Then one day, {after 2 almost 2 yrs.} he started to nip at my crocea mantles. Never ate them that I could see. I ended up trading away, 4 of the most beautiful clams you have seen.

I then, {on the advise of several very experienced aquarists}, started to feed the copperband the supermarket fresh Manila clams. He ate them with gusto and it became his main food, besides some frozen. Those that have done this in their large show tanks, said this kept them happy and they lefy the ornamentals alone, {which I had a hard time understanding how it could tell the diff.}

When Ben was looking for a copperband, I gave him mine, {yes, he knew about its appetite for clams}, but we figured since these other aquarists had luck, he may leave Ben,s clams alone. As you can see, thats not the case, which is what I figured it would do. To me, a clam, is a clam, is a clam.

Would I put one in a reef aquarium again. I think not. Mine was a beautiful fish though and a superb fish to have. He was always in my hand, eating mysis or something and criused around in the open. As mentioned, I traded 4 beauties {clams}, so as to keep him. However just to hard on many of the tanks creatures. So I guess it depends on what ones wishes to keep. Mine never bothered any lps I had, by the way, only clams.

[trilinearmipmap]

Originally Posted by michika

What happened? Did you see a visual difference? Can you describe the bad effects you saw?

First of all my mandarin died. I had had the mandarin for about a year. It was eating pods and frozen mysis. I can't prove that the CBB caused the mandarin's death but a few months after getting the CBB my mandarin died for no apparent reason. I suspect starvation. Besides eating the pods the CBB is quite aggressive with the frozen mysis and the mandarin was a slow methodical eater.

Second of all my bubble coral died. The bubble coral was a 12" showpiece coral, my favourite coral in the tank. It was healthy and thriving. However I noticed the Copperband stealing mysis whenever I tried to feed the bubble coral. After a few months of this the bubble coral started to gradually recede and then die. Tank parameters and water conditions were fine, all the other corals were fine, and the bubble coral is a very non-demanding coral. Again I can't prove that the CBB is responsible.

I have also notice that over the past year my octobubble coral is in a slow decline and recession.

I used to see lots of pods in my tank, now I can only find them in the refugium. I feel that the pods are an important part of the clean-up crew. Coinciding with the loss of pods in my tank, I had an outbreak of a nuisance Anthelia infestation on my live rock. I suspect that the lack of pods contributed to an accumulation of nutrients and junk on the rock that encouraged the Anthelia growth.

Overall within 6 months or so of adding my Copperband I had a dead mandarin, a dead bubble coral and an Anthelia outbreak.

If the Copperband weren't so gorgeous I would get rid of him.

[michika]

Good stuff to note and watch out for.

Can I ask how big your CBB is?

[hawk]

Anyone else with cbb and clam experience?

[EmilyB]

I sold my CBB because it was nipping my clam terribly. Then I ended up selling the clam to the same person person. The CBB never bothered it there. Go figure.

I'm about to try another CBB and have a clam. I'm prepared to sell the clam if necessary however, but may try the manilla feeding route.

[Delphinus]

I have a CBB in with 5 clams at the moment. There don't seem to be issues .... yet. I did have a moment on the weekend when I put in a new derasa where he seemed to sample the mantle, but I gave him an oyster to work on instead and he's left the clam alone since then.

But, it's something I watch for. I just basically don't trust the CBB completely as he eats nothing except for frozen foods (mysis or brine) or live foods (mussel, oyster or clams). He's gotta be hungry (his own fault for being so stubborn but nevertheless it's something I worry about).

He wasn't all that great at ridding the tank of aiptasia either. Six months after I got him I found myself still needing to inject a few of the buggers with kalk. He might have gotten some but certainly didn't "rid the tank of them." (Stupid fish. He's lucky he's pretty otherwise I'd have sold him months ago!)

Like most things, an element of hit and miss, I guess..

[hawk]

Seems to be a 50/50 crap shoot. I wonder if the size of the clam makes a difference. I have 14" derasa and 5"-6" maxima, would like to try a cbb but would hate to get rid of the clams if it didn't work out.

[Delphinus]

FWIW, mine is a smaller CBB (3") and I have clams ranging in size from 2.5" to 14". In all fairness he hasn't been a problem to the clams, and that incident with the new clam may just have been him "investigating" the new arrival (since all the other clams were in the tank long before he ever was).

But the main worry of mine, really, is his choice of foods. He's a hard fish to feed. Feeding mysis is easy enough but too much of it every day is hard on the bioload. I crashed my tank this way, so now I only feed mysis about once a week. So if you can find one that eats pellets and/or flakes, that would be golden.

Doug told me about the trick of feeding grocery store clams and that's basically what I do to offer this fish something to eat. My guess is that because the clams are cold water creatures in warm water, they're somewhat stressed and thus smell more like food than a healthy ornamental tridacnid clam would. However I'm willing to bet that if a tridacnid clam were to get sick or injured (and would thus start smelling more like "food" instead "tankmate to leave alone") that the tables would turn fairly quickly.