Red Fin Butterfly Fish - Obligate Coral Eater

[davelin315]

Hello Lee, I recently took in a red fin butterfly that had been purchased by another member of my aquarium club from saltwaterfish.com. On their site, this fish had been listed as eating clam so he bought it along with a couple of other fish. After he received it, he realized that it wouldn't eat any of the offerings that he gave it, including the listed clam, and tried to find out why. He then found out that it feeds on sps polyps and realized that it was too much for him. I offered to take it in and see if I could get it eating something else as I'm currently trying to train a copper band butterfly to eat aiptasia for some classroom tanks I maintain and one web site said they may eat anemones. In any case, I have not had much luck with this fish, either, and it's now going onto 11 or 12 days plus whatever time it spent with saltwaterfish.com without eating. It's slowly deteriorating and I would rather not see it die. Any help that you can provide would be great. I intend on force feeding it if necessary to give it enough time to be trained over. I have tried many different things including freezing foods to rock and coral but so far no luck other than seeing it pick on a certain rock in the tank that has a red algae on it, possibly coralline.

Thanks,

Dave Lin

[leebca]

WELCOME TO REEFLAND!

Thanks for posting Dave.

The Redfin or Chaetodon lunulatus Butterflyfish is, as you've learned an obligate coral eating fish. It doesn't belong in captivity. I'm sorry places still offer them for sale. Still much of the blame is on the collector and exporters. But to keep one in captivity the aquarist needs at least the following:

1) to stay or work from home -- the aquarist needs to be around the fish daily for a few hours;
2) to keep the fish in its own aquarium without other fishes;
3) acclimate the fish and give it a FW dip per my recommendations;
4) provide living corals for the fish to eat; and
5) maintain perfect water quality including but not limited to, performing about a 20% water change every other day or at least twice a week.

I will PM you with additional information, however you can see how daunting the above is for a casual aquarist. Most won't put the time, money, effort, and patience into such a project. It's sort of like having a friend that needs a private nurse.

[davelin315]

Hi Lee, thanks for the response. I'm actually home for the summer and carefully monitoring the fish in light of the fact that I'm acclimating a copperband and also setting up my larger aquarium. I look forward to your PM.

Dave

[davelin315]

Hi Lee, I was hoping that you might have a chance to PM me some more specific information on this fish and training it over. It's really being tortured right now as it now has not eaten for nearly 2 weeks and I'm worried that it won't make it. I realize that it's not an appropriate fish to keep in captivity but, again, I didn't buy it and am only trying to help keep it alive since it can't be sent back to the ocean where it came from.

Thanks!

[leebca]

Not sure what happened Dave. I sent the PM one day ago. I'll check into it and get you a resend or write it again.

[davelin315]

Thanks, I'll look again for it!

[davelin315]

Hi Lee, got the PM and have begun trying your suggestions but made an interesting discovery tonight. I decided to try and mimic the rock that it's been picking on and thought that it might be picking on it because of the color and appearance of the coralline algae on the rock. It resembles pavona or some psammacora corals as well so I put a rock that had some cyclopeeze frozen to it in the tank since it is the closest thing coloration and shape wise to what it's been picking at. It picked it over so I then took another rock and jammed a bunch of cyclopeeze into it and put it in. It then ate this as well! I don't know how much this will help this fish out, but I'm hopeful that I can save it this way. I haven't moved it to its own tank yet because I figure if it's finally nibbling on something then moving it will stress it out again and in its severely deteriorated state, that's not a good idea. Anyway, thanks for the help and suggestions, I'm trying them as well.

I still think it's horrible, by the way, to capture and sell this fish, but hopefully I can help this one out.