copperband butterfly terror!!!

RKLion

New member
My copperband used to be one of my favourites as he saved me many hours of headaches with aiptasia. He cleaned them out quickly and the feather dusters too. The problem is that now he has switched over to nipping at my ultra acan collection. Actually eating away the centers to the point that you can see white skeleton. Anyone have similar experiences???
 
+1. Butterflyfish are not reef-safe and will decimate your corals. in the future it'll be a good idea to research extensively on the fish you want to buy prior to purchasing.
 
Yes. My copperband originally nipped @ my LPS corals. Then began eating all the aiptasia. Now he no longer nips at my LPS.. but its a matter of when.
 
Well I definitely did research this fish prior to purchase and its not my first. It was a godsend, saving me countless hours squirting joes juice or similar products and of course saving me the cost of the joes juice. So what I did last night was remove the 4 acans out of 15 that I noticed he was focusing on, which coincidentally were the newest additions. Interestingly enough he is not eating the other older more established colonies. So I have to wonder if he sensed they were weaker from recent transport and wanted to exploit that. I will acclimate the 4 harassed colonies over the next few weeks in my frag tank and reintroduce them and see what happens
 
Well I definitely did research this fish prior to purchase and its not my first. It was a godsend, saving me countless hours squirting joes juice or similar products and of course saving me the cost of the joes juice. So what I did last night was remove the 4 acans out of 15 that I noticed he was focusing on, which coincidentally were the newest additions. Interestingly enough he is not eating the other older more established colonies. So I have to wonder if he sensed they were weaker from recent transport and wanted to exploit that. I will acclimate the 4 harassed colonies over the next few weeks in my frag tank and reintroduce them and see what happens
 
+1. Butterflyfish are not reef-safe and will decimate your corals. in the future it'll be a good idea to research extensively on the fish you want to buy prior to purchasing.

That blanket statement is just as bad as saying all CBB are reef safe ;)

Every fish is different. LPS corals are especially vulnerable, IMO, because they eat larger foods. IME fish see this, and go after the food/gut contents of the LPS. My female genicanthus angel is notorious for this!
 
Maybe hes not as bad as I made him out to be. Was worth it still tough as aiptasia is worse when it gets out of control.
 
i agreed with Peter. i used to have a chromis that went after my LPS because i used to feed the LPS during the light on. after remove the chromis, i feed the LPS at night when the fish are sleeping. i have no incident so far. i do not have Copperband fish.
 
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