Wittnessed An Interesting Behavior

[Ambition]

Aside from all of the excitement of the frag swap today (no coral ready tanks yet ), I went into an LFS on my way home. I browsed through the store as I usually do, drooling over the collection of fish they have in their 300DD FOWLR and their custom reef display. I then made my way back to one of their two FOWLR specific tanks. Both of which contain their large angels, butterflyfish, tusks, tangs, etc. One of the two tanks had a pair of lemon butterflies in it. I witnessed the smaller one of the two act as if it was cleaning a blue hippo tang. The tang would flip sideways about 60 degrees and the butterfly would pick at it. I was a little surprised as I haven't found anything as of now that says they act as cleaners...

 

[jjk_reef00]

I've had several different species of butterfly fish attempt to clean when they were 3" or smaller. Usually the other fish don't like it very much. Very cool to see it when it happens though.

 

[humaguy]

many angels and butterflies act as cleaners when they are babies...I once watched my baby cortez angel "teach" my baby queen how to clean my large trigs...this behavior will stop once the angel/butterfly begin to grow and change coloration...

 

[Ambition]

I knew baby angels acted as cleaners, just never saw anything about young butterflies doing so.

 

[SDguy]

It's not just juvi's... there are several nature shows showing butterflies (adults) cleaning large sea turtles.

 

[humaguy]

yes, and my cortez even when a large sub-adult liked to clean my massive gh trig...