aiptasia

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by Zoaelite

Although many will advocate against the use of the Copperband Butterfly I'm personally for them. Its said they have terrible track records in captivity but my first lasted 2+ years (died from a rockwork collapse) and my second is going 3 years strong.

Amazing fish, will eat right out of your hand if trained. In addition to this he feverishly devours the little nems. Didn't touch any of my coral (including zoos) to boot.

+1, I love my CBB. Don't think I'll ever run a system without one. Once they're acclimated I think they're as robust as any other fish, it's getting them acclimated that can be tricky. If the one you bring home isn't already aggressively eating a wide variety of frozen food IMO they require a month or so of TLC in a low competition QT system just so they can be trained to eat. It's when people put a freaked out, freshly caught CBB that's never even seen a mysis before straight in to a community tank that they whither away, get sick and die. Once they're eating prepared foods with gusto they can hold their own against anyone. By the time my CBB went in, the berghias were very clearly winning the aiptasia war (ie, entire rocks were being cleared overnight) so I never got a chance to see what he could do. But when there was still aiptasia in the tank he'd only touch the very tiniest of them, he completely ignored anything bigger than 2 or 3 mm across. He was a lot smaller then though, so maybe he'd go after bigger ones now. Since I know he eats the small ones, I consider him an insurance policy against re-infestation now that the berghias have all been sold or starved.