Matted Filefish or Copperband Butterfly?

[Snappy]

ditto
I here the same about cleaner wrasses and mine is about 4 years in my system.

[paddyob]

Originally Posted by reefwars

i know several people who have cbb's for yrs as well

Yes. But do more people have them alive or are they dead now. Gotta look at the ratio. Even with cleaners snappy. We all know the facts.

Anyways. Good luck. Best to keep the op thread on topic... Unless hashing the normal debates is helpful.

[dreef]

I've had 2 CCB's thru the years,one lasted almost a year,not getting another. My matted filefish destroyed all my apatasia but got lazy once it discovered pelleted food,nori,and frozen food.He absolutely will destroy duncans and mini maxi's

[Spiny]

You went the right way. This was my tank a year ago before I added 2 filefishes. They never picked on corals except one torch which was ugly anyways! Zoas, SPS, Elegance, frogspawn... all untouched for a full year

[ponokareefer]

The filefish went after a large open brain coral, so I'm having to yank it out and put in my RSM130.

[Jackie]

I have aiptasia in sump but none in display tank, no UV.
I have my CBB for more than 3 years but never seen him eating any.

[Marlin65]

I have had my copper banded for over a year now and he cleaned up all my apitasia, and eats mysis and clams. No dry food. He eats out of my hand and is not shy at all my fav fish for sure. I find they need lots of food to eat.
I think ones it's eating it's an easy fish to keep. I do have a large tank with only a few fish though.
Mine is mid size not small and not large.

[mike]

ive never owned a filefish, but i purchased a copperband about 6 weeks ago. for the first 2 weeks i didnt notice the decrease in aiptasia. after that they were disappearing nightly. i now have none. i borrow rocks with aiptasia from my lfs, copper cleans them in a day or 2.

[Murph]

just to chime in ive had alot of luck with peppermint shrimps against aptasia cheap and effective and a good addidtion to any tank reef safe i think i paid like 15 buks.

[asylumdown]

I think the secret with CBB is to make sure they're getting enough food. They're such slow and considered eaters, that by the time they decide to suck up that piece of mysis, half the time it's either blown away or someone else has grabbed it. Over time they'll figure out how to compete (most fish usually do), but I think most starve to death before they really adapt. I think people would have much better overall success with them if they provided newly arrived CBB with a steady supply of clams on the half shell. I've never seen a CBB that didn't go ape $#%& for clams, newly arrived or not, and if you drop one in while it's still on the shell, it has all the time in the world to pick at it. That's how I acclimated my CBB to prepared foods. It quickly became my favourite fish, even though mine didn't seem to even see the aiptasia I bought him to eat.

Moral of the story, using an animal that isn't an obligate feeder of something to control that something is always hit and miss. Even animals that are supposed to love the thing you're trying to get rid of might not have gotten that particular memo.

I would also say that if you've tried peppermint shrimp to eliminate aiptasia (I did once, and it didn't work at all for me), don't bother with Berghia unless you can get all the shrimp out of the tank. Peppermint's like Berghia a heck of a lot more than they like aiptasia. As do several wrasses, and possibly CBBs. That was a very expensive lesson to learn.