One of the fish nearly all of you will recognize has many dozens of common names in languages spanning the globe. The most common of these names in English are “Raccoon Butterflyfish” and “Halfmoon Butterfly.” Translations of these two names appear in several languages. Other names include Raccoon Coralfish, Spotted Butterflyfish, Red-striped Butterflyfish, Moon Butterflyfish, and Crescent Chaetodon. One of the staff favorite names is “Alibangbang” which comes from the Philippines and google translates as “Butterfly.” These fish have many names, primarily because they are a common fish that have a huge range, are often caught for aquariums, and occasionally harvested for food! Chaetodon, the genus of these fish, has a large number of species in it. The World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) lists 105 accepted species in the genus, most of which will be seen at one time or another in your fish store. Feeding Raccoon Butterflies is very straightforward, as they are an omnivore in the wild and very adaptable to captive feeding. This is one of their biggest benefits over many other Butterflyfish that frequently have extremely specific diets. In the wild, Raccoons will graze over rocks and coral surfaces, eating pretty much everything they come across. The vast majority of this diet ends up being small invertebrates like tiny shrimp, tubeworms, featherdusters and nudibranchs though they will also consume polyps like aiptasia but also zoanthid species and perhaps other coral polyps. They love to pick at clams as well. This means that while they are not “reef safe”, they will generally accept a wide range of foods. We feed them the Algae / Color Boost shots and sinking pellets from Nutramar here and these are accepted greedily; the shots allow them to graze on food and this works very well. We also give them a mix of meaty invertebrate based foods like tubifex, bloodworm, mysis and chopped prawn from Gamma Foods. A varied diet is key to their immune health and coloration. Click here to learn more
