Tahitian Butterfly Fish?

[cocoaandme]

I saw one at a LFS and it was in their reef tank and it wasn't picking on any of the corals. Is this a reef safe fish or was that just a strange anomaly? Thanks.

[SDguy]

Interesting....sure it wasn't Chaetodon kleini?

[cocoaandme]

Yep yep. At first I thought it was but then I saw a klein's in an adjacent tank and there was no mistaking that they were different. So I asked the guy what it was and he said it was a tahitian butterfly. I looked it up and it matches. Odd huh? There were sps in there too.

[SDguy]

Neat! Never seen one. And therefore, I have no idea about their coral eating habits. Sorry :o

[Gary Majchrzak]

sooo... what's the real name of this fish :confused:

[SDguy]

http://www.fishbase.gr/Summary/SpeciesSummary.php?id=12537

[Chibils]

This thread is a TeamRC fest! That's really cool; I've never heard of this butterfly. But from what I do know about butterflies, they're all hit-or-miss just about. Many will go after corals, many will not. This seems to happen in just about every species from what I've seen.

[Gary Majchrzak]

Chaetodon trichrous is a new one on me.

One word of caution: LFS's will introduce a Butterfly to get rid of pests and then yank it before it moves on to eating corals.

[cocoaandme]

Yeah but it wasn't in a diplay tank it was in the selling tank and the selling tank was clean of any pests. I dunno it seemed odd. And I wanted to buy it, but they said it was too hard to catch him. Haha I really want him because he was seriously disinterested in the corals. He was just swimming around.

[SDguy]

That's not necessarily a good sign...he could be uninterested in ANY food.....not uncommon for some butterflies in captivity.

[Gary Majchrzak]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12608802#post12608802 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by SDguy
That's not necessarily a good sign...he could be uninterested in ANY food.....not uncommon for some butterflies in captivity.
ditto that observation...

and my post about pest removal can be applied to selling tanks as well as display tanks. Face it- when the LFS wants to remove that Butterfly from the selling tank it will ;)

[cocoaandme]

Hmm perhaps. Well I will go back there tomorrow and see if he is still there. It seemed like they had him for a while and he seemed quite healthy and active. Also why would they put him in the coral tank if he wasn't doing so well? I also saw some at another lfs and they were eating, but they were not with any corals.

[buzzbombtom]

ask them to feed it for you. and not brine something that would be healthy for your fish to eat all the time.

[philter4]

Tahitian butterfly is a sister species to kleins butterfly and care is the same. Also, just like kleins, they may eat both stoney and soft corals as well as zoo's so if you put it in a reef be careful, could be a problem, I had one that I got for aptasia control and it ate all the octo corals I kept with it so I had to get rid of him.

[cocoaandme]

Hmm I guess I should get a fish trap then? Have you ever owned any that didn't bother octocorals?

[philter4]

I've only owned 1 tahitian B/F, but I have a atlantic longnose and a banded butterfly that don't bother the octo's. I can't collect corals, so I don't know what the banded would do, they are coral eaters in the wild, in fact most don't survive in tanks, but this one was tiny and I raised him so he grew with no corals and on frozen aquarium foods.

As a general rule, the longsnouted butterflies are the most well behaved in tanks, they usually use their long noses to pick benthic inverts from between the coral branches, that is why they have such long snouts, so they are more reef safe then the others. There are also a group of planktavores such as the heniochus and pyramid butterflies which are more safe then the main group of butterflies.

[cocoaandme]

What do you mean by you can;t collect corals? What kind of corals did you have with the longnose butterfly? Do they pick on lps? This is exciting. I would very much like to have a butterfly in my tank.

[buzzbombtom]

because he has an octo tank he cant have corals i believe.

[cocoaandme]

I think he meant octo as in octocorals not octopus.

[philter4]

I collect all of my own animals, I think it is more fun then keeping the tank, but both in FL and HI (where I have licenses to collect) it is illegal to take any stony coral so I don't have any. Octocorals, of which there are only 3 or 4 in HI, are the closest thing I get to coral.

[cocoaandme]

Oh wow so how do you get a license to collect? What's it like collecting your own corals? Oh and I talked to the guy today and he said he had the butterfly for 6 months. I think that they probably do eat octocorals because I didn't see any in the tank with it.

[cocoaandme]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12609518#post12609518 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by philter4
I've only owned 1 tahitian B/F, but I have a atlantic longnose and a banded butterfly that don't bother the octo's. I can't collect corals, so I don't know what the banded would do, they are coral eaters in the wild, in fact most don't survive in tanks, but this one was tiny and I raised him so he grew with no corals and on frozen aquarium foods.

As a general rule, the longsnouted butterflies are the most well behaved in tanks, they usually use their long noses to pick benthic inverts from between the coral branches, that is why they have such long snouts, so they are more reef safe then the others. There are also a group of planktavores such as the heniochus and pyramid butterflies which are more safe then the main group of butterflies.


So the longnose butterfly didn't touch any of your octocorals?

[philter4]

No, my atlantic longnose doesn't bother any of my octocorals, they are probably my favorite fish so I have always had at least 1 and they have never bothered any of my inverts or softcorals. Also, cocoaandme, it is illegal to collect corals so I don't collect any, I do collect things like ricordia, zooanthids, and all of my shrimp and ornamental worms. I am a fish guy though so I always figure the inverts, except the shrimp, are secondary, if they get eaten it is ok, as long as the fish are healthy. I have a great collection of shrimp though, especially some very rare Stenopus (coral banded type) species.

[cocoaandme]

Wow ok I think I am going to add an atlantic longnose to my tank. I am looking for fish that do not eat corals or macroalgae. I added a klein's today and he is doing fine and not bothering my corals and eating spectrum.