Reef Safe Butterflies?

[Gwynhidwy]

I'm looking for suggestions for a reef safe butterfly fish. I know they eat some inverts, but which ones? Can I have a butterfly fish of some sort with corals? I've heard that some will mostly only bother feather dusters and small anemones, is this true? Which types?

I've not had a butterfly fish before, but I'd like to add one in the future to the 155G that I'm setting up, so I'm looking for suggestions. It currently has live rock, and will eventually have corals though I'm not set on what types just yet and am willing to limit what I will have if necessary. I don't care about keeping feather duster worms or small anemones.

[JamesJR]

There are all sorts of butterflies with all sorts of behaviors. Mixing any of them can be a risk even if they are supposedly not supposed to nip at corals. But it can be done, you just have to face up that there may be a slight chance of them eating your corals.

The best bets are: Schooling bannerfish, copperbands, yellow longnose, Zoster butterfly, pyramid butterflys. There are a few more but these are what you are most likely to run into at a shop.

A good book to read is Scott michael's book on butterflies and angels. He goes into a good bit of detail about butterflies. Also, there are certain corals that a butterfly may not find pallatable. I put a large Auriga in a 180 gallon reef that was almost exclussively leather corals and it left them alone for the most part.

[nosferatu51]

Hmmm, I'd contemplated adding bannerfish to my reef and decided against it. There are 2 nearly identical species (H. diphrutes and H. acuminatus). One (acuminatus) is a coral nipper, the other is not. The differences are subtle to say the least and it wasn't a chance I was willing to take.

[JamesJR]

The difference is really subtle, but they are distinguishable if you can tell the difference. The safer choice is the diphreatus which has much less steeply sloped forehead and the anal fin is less pronounced and makes a nice right angle. The riskier H. Acuminatus's anal fin is more pronounced and makes an angle smaller than 90 degrees. If you remember the difference it isn't that hard to tell them apart. The difference seems, at least to me, more pronounced in larger individuals than it does in smaller ones.

H. Acuminatus
http://filaman.ifm-geomar.de/Photos/ThumbnailsSummary.php?ID=5588

H. Diphreatus (more reef safe)
http://www.fishbase.org/Photos/ThumbnailsSummary.php?ID=7769

Hope this helps

[JamesJR]

oh, it is dipreuts not diphreatus, minor note.

[thor32766]

copper bands are pretty reef safe except tube worms.

[tmz]

I keep a yellow pryamid and a big longnose butterfly in different reef tanks with no agression toward anything .

[thor32766]

Thats good to know about the longnose.

[tmz]

Just to clarify the fish I have is the BIG longnose,forcipiger longirostris, not the forcipiger flavissimus.Good Luck and have fun selecting your butterfly.

[zemuron114]

pyramid butterflies are pretty much the only real reefsafe butterfly. Even the C. dipheurtes has a tendency to nip here and there if not fed enough. The long long nose bfly is pretty safe (not the regular one)

butterflies are a touchy topic! Some wont eat and some will its a toss up :)

[Valab]

There was a recent thread on RC regarding distinguishing between acuminatus and diphruetes. I don't have the search capability to find it, but it involved counting the number of dorsal spines. Looked pretty foolproof.