Copper Band Butterfly "HOW TO?"

[Hamada]

I have a 100gal reef tank and would love to add a Copper band butterfly. ive tried a few times years ago but failed. i know they are finiky fish but whats the best way to get them to live in your reef tank.

My tank live stock is

• 8 - Blue Chromis
• 4 - Anthias
• 2 - Blue Tangs
• 1 - Yellow Tang
• 2 - Ocellaris Clownfish
• 1 - Lightning Clownfish
• 1 - FireFish
• 1 - Yellow watchman Goby
• 1 - Yellow Tale Damsel
• 1 - Hawk Fish
• 3 - Cleaner Shrimp
• + A lot of corals​

All the live stock has been in the system for 1 year and every one gets along just fine, all very peaceful and no fighting.

 

[Peach02]

The best way is to find one that is eating at your LFS and not eating as in picking at some brine shrimp I mean eating like a hungry yellow tang with mysis

 

[Paul B]

I don't find them finicky at all. First of all, don't quarantine it, they hate that.
In the sea they eat worms that they use their long snouts to get. I feed mine clams. I buy live clams and freeze them, then shave off thin pieces. My present copperband is about 10 years old.
I also give him live white worms or blackworms. A good commercial food is LRS Reef Frenzy which I use as my staple.

 

[Jvesche20]

The best way is to find one that is eating at your LFS and not eating as in picking at some brine shrimp I mean eating like a hungry yellow tang with mysis

+1 on this

 

[Peach02]

I don't find them finicky at all. First of all, don't quarantine it, they hate that.
In the sea they eat worms that they use their long snouts to get. I feed mine clams. I buy live clams and freeze them, then shave off thin pieces. My present copperband is about 10 years old.
I also give him live white worms or blackworms. A good commercial food is LRS Reef Frenzy which I use as my staple.

With your white worm culture how do you know when it’s okay to harvest without stopping there from being enough to reproduce?

 

[Aheinz]

I have to say, the copperband butterfly is probably my favorite looking butterfly, and reading this helped cause i thought they were difficult because of their normal diet

 

[falconut]

The best way is to find one that is eating at your LFS and not eating as in picking at some brine shrimp I mean eating like a hungry yellow tang with mysis

+1

 

[GoldeneyeRet]

Find one that is clearly eating, not just picking , as mentioned earlier . Make sure there are no grey or redish bruises on the fish and look closely for mouth damage.

I would absolutely QT it and be ready with NFG and blackworms.

Upon intro to dt make sure it isnt intimidated right away. Especially watch the yellow tang, it may not accept the CBB.

Once settled in my current cbb became one of the more aggressive feeders in my tank. My emperor wont even push it around.

 

[foxt]

There are going to be three things you will need to look out for:

1. getting a healthy fish, preferably one that you can see eat before you buy it. If you buy online, at least get one from a reputable place that does some conditioning (I have had luck with Divers Den CBBs).
2. getting the fish to eat after you get it home (they have a reputation for a reason)
3. introducing the fish to that 100g stocked with an established community (several possible aggressors for a new CBB in that tank)

#2 can be a challenge with any fish, but CBBs can be enticed with live black worms, raw clams, or whatever they were eating (if they were) when you saw them at the LFS. Will you QT? For me, a big benefit of putting the fish in a tank by itself when I get it home is that I get a chance to find out what it will eat, and if it is not eating, I get a chance to try to get it to eat without it having to compete with all of the other fish in the DT.

For #3, when is the last time you added a new fish, and how did that go? The tangs might give the CBB a hard time when it is introduced. You say that they all get along, but when you introduce a single new fish, especially one with a similar body type to any of the other fish, it brings out the aggression in them. An acclimation box can help, although with a CBB, you'd need a fairly large one.

 

[bblumberg]

My experiences have mostly been bad. I have purchased them from multiple online sources, put into quarantine (with live rock and sand), seen them eat and watched them all die in quarantine.

About 4 months ago, I bought 2 from a LFS who had a tank of CBBs. They insisted that I should not quarantine the fish since the system had copper already. I did an experiment: one went into my 150g reef and the other went into quarantine (without copper or any other medicine). The one that went into my 150g survived (after some bullying and hiding) and is a vigorous eater today, holding his own against many other fish in the tank including a Kleins' butterfly, yellow tang, large Desjardins tang and a very active Achilles tang. The other one died in quarantine, despite apparently eating... I still quarantine all my fish, but this CBB experience is in line with what Paul B recommends.

 

[Paul B]

With your white worm culture how do you know when it’s okay to harvest without stopping there from being enough to reproduce?

They reproduce very fast as long as you fed them bread and yogurt. You can take as many as you like but you don't need to feed them to the fish every day. Once or twice a week is fine just to get the bacteria into the fish. Of course if you run a quarantined tank, you are on your own and you will not be able to feed live foods and IMO you will not be successful with a copperband long term. They live over 12 years, maybe 20

I have purchased them from multiple online sources, put into quarantine (with live rock and sand), seen them eat and watched them all die in quarantine.

I feel quarantining is the worst thing we invented for this hobby and an "intelligent, curious" fish like a copperband will not do well in quarantine.
Their diet consists of live worms which you should not feed to any quarantined fish.

 

[Peach02]

They reproduce very fast as long as you fed them bread and yogurt. You can take as many as you like but you don't need to feed them to the fish every day. Once or twice a week is fine just to get the bacteria into the fish. Of course if you run a quarantined tank, you are on your own and you will not be able to feed live foods and IMO you will not be successful with a copperband long term. They live over 12 years, maybe 20

I was more talking for my mandarin since it didn't like the live brine shrimp feeder I'm gonna try this. Is it the same for them only once or twice a week?

 

[foxt]

Of course if you run a quarantined tank, you are on your own and you will not be able to feed live foods and IMO you will not be successful with a copperband long term.

Their diet consists of live worms which you should not feed to any quarantined fish.

Why can’t live food be given to a fish in QT? Only bread and water?

My use of a QT is for observation; “quarantine”, not “treatment tank”. New fish go in, and are given lots of healthy food choices from day one. Black worms are a favorite, and thanks to Paul, I culture my own in a farm inspired by one of his inventions. If, after at least 30 days, the new fish is eating aggressively and shows no signs of bringing any parasites or disease with it, it goes into the DT. I don’t know what “long term success” is with a CBB, but mine went through this method two years ago and is doing fine.

 

[Jase4224]

I recently had a CBB that went into my 180 and it starved. Always picked on the rock and seemed happy but never ate anything I tried feeding including mysis, NLS and vitalis pellets, fresh mussels and I tried soaking in garlic which didn’t help either. Always seemed excited when food was added but just never figured out how to eat it.

I would suggest that you definitely want to SEE this fish eat before purchase.

My LFS also treats with copper and hypo. Perhaps that is not good for CBB..

 

[Paul B]

I was more talking for my mandarin since it didn't like the live brine shrimp feeder I'm gonna try this. Is it the same for them only once or twice a week?

Mandarins love live worms but mandarins need to eat every few seconds and unless you have an aweful lot of worms, they still need pods or something similar.

Why can’t live food be given to a fish in QT? Only bread and water?

Live foods have bacteria and maybe parasites. Quarantined fish have a limited immune system and they can contract something negative by feeding live foods.
(One more reason I don't like quarantining)

My use of a QT is for observation; “quarantine”, not “treatment tank”. New fish go in, and are given lots of healthy food choices from day one. Black worms are a favorite, and thanks to Paul, I culture my own in a farm inspired by one of his inventions. If, after at least 30 days, the new fish is eating aggressively and shows no signs of bringing any parasites or disease with it, it goes into the DT. I don’t know what “long term success” is with a CBB, but mine went through this method two years ago and is doing fine.

Blackworms are one of my favorite foods and if you quarantine, any parasites on the worms won't effect salt water fish.

 

[Peach02]

Mandarins love live worms but mandarins need to eat every few seconds and unless you have an aweful lot of worms, they still need pods or something similar.

So would you recommend feeding mine white worms twice a week and training it onto frozen?

 

[Paul B]

No, not exactly. The worms are great but a mandarin will not live long term eating anything except living food that it needs constantly. An aged tank with a living pod population is needed.
A mandarin lives about ten years but if it is not eating constantly his lifespan will be measured in months. He will probably eat frozen food but they have no real stomach and can't store food. They are not that type of fish and need constant food. The people who feed frozen also have living pods weather they know it or not.

 

[Peter K]

Another thing to bring up is that copperbands are pretty slow eaters compared to other fish (aka tangs) so I would recommend figuring out a system to feed it separately from the 3 tangs for a while. We made ours a feeding out of 1/2" pvc with small holes drilled in it only large enough for his beak and that helped him massively as he could eat at his own pace.
Also, and this sounds bad, but if you find a coral he eats you might want to exploit that. Our second copperband, who has now been with us 3 years, demolished all the acans in our tank so we bought $5 acan frags from our LFS to feed him for a few weeks until he slowly was weaned onto frozen just to keep him healthy.

 

[Paul B]

Actually my copperband is my biggest, fastest eater. He will devour clams as fast as I want to feed them and forget worms, he eats them like spaghetti.

 

[GoldeneyeRet]

CBS are only slow eaters when they are newly introduced. Once settled they are as aggressive as any fish when it comes to chow time. My emporer angel cant outeat my cbb.