Butterflyfish

[muck]

Anyone running a tank populated with mostly butterflyfish?

[Lance]

Deb used to. I don't know if she still does though.

[rayjay]

Not now, but had one for about 10 years. Shut it down now and sold off everything and it will become a seahorse raising tank after they reach 4 months of age.

[Delphinus]

I wanted to do a BOWLR at some point but it's a little dicey. Butterflyfish when small get along great but can become territorial as they get bigger. Was reading somewhere (forget where now, sorry) that for such peaceable looking fish they can actually get pretty nasty with each other.

I can't remember if Deb's tank was "mostly" butterflies or if there just were a couple.

I have two double-saddleback in my cube tank and they're pretty destructive to a lot of things, so unfortunately FOWLR is really the basic idea unless you go with maybe pyramids..

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

I have a beautiful Copperband that eats everything, unfortunately everything includes LPS corals.

[VFX]

I love butterflies & I've had a few butterfly dominated tanks before.

I tried Long Nosed, Big Long Nosed, Raccoon, Copperband, a few B&W Heniocus (both Acuminatus & Diphreutes), & Pyramid in a mixed reef. When they got larger they all, baring the Pyramid, started to bother my hammers & clams.

I added a Saddleback & Auriga to that particular set up and they were both fine with clams for a while & only nipped at SPS occasionally. Then all of a sudden they decided to really go to town on the clams & one of the sylos (no LPS at this point) so had to be moved.

At the moment the only ones I trust in a reef are the Pyramid, Raccoon & Big Long Nose (Cooperbands too maybe, but they seem too delicate & finicky for me to try again). They can occasionally annoy my smaller clams but generally leave everything else alone if well fed.

But having said that, I have in the past, had both 'turn' & attack clam mantles & SPS after living peacefully with them for a while.

One problem with Butterflies is that they are very finicky. It sometimes takes a while to find one that settle in, eat well & live a long time. A lot don't make it past 6 months & pass on for no apparent reason, whilst others just stop eating after a couple of weeks or months & die. Cyanide perhaps in many cases?

One observation - the non-reef safe butterflies seemed to be able to adjust to tank life somewhat better than the reef safe ones I've had. Maybe the more 'reef safe' they are, the more picky they are about food.

The Raccoon & Pyramids seem to be exceptions to this & are generally hardy with one thing to note. Don't buy Raccoons that are too small. I've never had one bought at less than 2" last more than a few months.

Another observation, my Raccoon completely ignored any nori I clipped to the side of the tank until I got a Naso Tang. Now they fight each other for it!

Anyway, fascinating fish & some of my favourites for sure.

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[Delphinus]

Great comments VFX. I second the notion that "too small" is not a good purchase decision, I've had the exact same experience. I also read it somewhere (think is was wetwebmedia but might be wrong) that medium sized is the best bet - too small and too large tend not to make it. I tried a pair of baby sized raccoons (around 1") and neither of them lived very long. Had a midsized raccoon for a while but he perished in a mysterious tank problem (I *think* it was a clam spawn but never did confirm it, and what's weird is I've never had fatalities following a clam spawn event before and I lost 4 or 5 in that event - O2 depletion maybe ?? Anyhow sorry getting off track here). The raccoon was an awesome little butterfly and I want to try another but I did find he was destructive to my LPS.

For that matter my old CBB was pretty destructive to small LPS - blastos, acan's, etc. - couldn't keep any of those.

What I've observed with my ulietensis (the false-falcula or double-saddlebacks) is that anything that has tentacles (eg. feeder tentacles) is irresistable to them. So things like aiptasia and majano anemones are toast instantly, whereas things that put out those tentacles only at night, like brain corals, when the fish are sleeping, will last longer but not indefinitely). They WERE ok with a larger RBTA for a few months however literally that changed overnight. I never noticed any picking at it but BAM, literally one day it disappeared and I have a pretty good idea it was the butterflies, it's not a case of it crawled into the rockwork and is hiding.

They're so dang pretty though. I really want to try a tank with the saddlebacks, an auriga and a raccoon or two and then call it done. My dream FOWLR (or BOWLR - butterflies only with live rock) tank.

Since threads are always better with pickchurs.. I took these photos on my last vacation:










Noticed a very interesting behaviour with the raccoons. They loved snorkelers and divers and would follow along. The reason being is they know that damsels with egg broods will try to chase away divers and in their distraction the butterflies will snack away at the eggs. Did get a video of this but I can't find it, I can post it later if I find where I uploaded it to...

[Delphinus]

One more. Sorry for the indulgence. Here's a picture of one of the double saddlebacks:

[VFX]

Beautiful pictures Tony.

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[VFX]

Here's a couple I had lying around.

















(Muck I couldn't help posting some pics after seeing Tony's - hope you don't mind)

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