The Butterfly Lover's Thread

Fishfreak2009

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I received my Longnose butterflyfish from TSM yesterday morning :beaming-face-with-smiling-eyes: He's very small, at about 2.5-3 inches. I hope he gets along with my much bigger CBB.
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Those both look like really nice, fat, healthy butterflies!
 

Fishfreak2009

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I did lose my Pakistani. No idea why. Looked fine, stopped eating and found it dead within 48 hrs. Necropsy showed nothing out of the ordinary, no aggression from other fish, no signs of disease. Died after roughly 25 days in captivity.

I'll try again at some point, but will probably go with a different supplier. My pearlscale, ulietensis, and Heniochus varius are all doing great! Still begging for food all day, eating like pigs, and cruising around the tank.

I went looking for more butterflies tonight at the one LFS that is closer to me. Unfortunately they only had a longnose and a copperband, and neither would eat or looked particularly great. Holding off on a copperband until I find a perfect fish. I did find a few nice wrasses and some really nice captive bred seahorses though!

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Fishfreak2009

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Well, I threw in some pieces of 3 different caulerpa varieties tonight. Going to see if any survive the lemonpeel angel and the 2 longspine urchins. Caulerpa racemosa, Caulerpa taxifolia, and Caulerpa peltata.

Also moved all the snails, hermits, the tiger pistol shrimp, the 3 brittle stars, and the 2 longspine urchins into the 100 gallon with the butterflies today, along with a few different Discosoma and Rhodactis mushrooms. They've done some nipping (mostly the ulietensis), but haven't outright eaten them. They actually seem to prefer going after the Nassarius snails moreso than the mushroom corals. This Friday I'm picking up a huge GSP rock, a few different varieties of zoas and Palys, some more Discosoma and Rhodactis mushrooms, a toadstool leather, a couple different Montiporas, and a Stylophora to try out from about 5 local reefers all interested in this experiment. I have a large (6"x6") Stylococcinella colony I've been growing out in my wife's evo on a frag rack that I may try as well.
 

OrionN

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I have my CBB and the Convict tang in a 40 gal breeder, which is my QT system. There is no aggression but the Convict is really active and often zoom really fast the length of the tank. This is disruptive to the CBB. I need to move all three to the DT soon. Maybe this weekend.
 

Fishfreak2009

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Well, today was the big day to add corals! My local reef group (Southeast Michigan Reef) all came through and hooked me up with a TON of freebies to fill this tank with, so that the butterflies hopefully don't completely wipe out any particular coral. I added a couple mushrooms, a tiny turquoise polyp staghorn Acropora frag, and a Stylococcinella colony. Everything else (GSP, TONS of about 6 types of Palythoa, some more mushrooms, a green Sarcophyton, a couple small rose BTAs, TONS of different Monti caps, a couple different Monti digitatas, and some Pavona) all came from local reefers who wanted to help with this experiment.

So far, they've mostly nipped at damaged tissue (from transport) on the Monti caps and digitata, a little nipping at the Stylococcinella, but nothing crazy on any of them. They haven't touched anything else. Can't see any visible damage. They actually seem much more interested in the microfauna, worms, pods, etc that came off the corals. The Heniochus almost immediately ate both Aiptasia that I was able to see on the frags, picked them out from between the palys without even making the palys close up.

Shot a quick video, most of the corals aren't really opened up yet, but so far so good! You can see the Heniochus varius nipping at the red digitata colony in the video, but it's actually nipping at the skeleton covered in detritus, not at the healthy tissue at all.

 

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