Has anyone had problems with Copperband Butterflys in their reef tanks??

[wolmutt]

I want to put one in my 90 gallon reef tank to clean up the aptasia, but I don't want it nipping at my corals. Is it a big risk to house one in a reef tank? Has anyone had any big problems doing this?

[smeese]

Yeah.....problems keeping them alive I had one for over a year and it kacked for no reason. No problems with corals though.

[Clownnut]

i have mine over 6 months now. so far so good. only problem is it only eat mysis or PE mysis. smaller copperband will accept prepared food better than the bigger one, and only buy the copperband eat at the store, if it's not eat at the store more than likely it will not eat in your tnak.
Li

[oyam123]

Id just get some peppermint shrimp.
99% of them just end up dead in a year or so.

[Troy]

I had a huge aiptasia problem and the copperband cleaned it up great without taking out any corals. unfortunately once the aiptasia was gone I couldn't get it to eat and it took a trip on the porcelain express. I had tried peppermint before that. No good. I had 15 or so in a 210 gallon, and after several months they still hadn't made a noticable difference. They do a great job keeping it under control now that the copperband is gone. Aiptasia pop up from time to time, and disappear a few days later. I'd recommend get a copperband then, once aiptasia are gone, find someone else with them to sell/donate it to, then follow up with peppermints.

[REEFSTOCK]

I've had good luck with peppermints myself. I have read that they can't tackle a full grown aptasia, though.

[David Grigor]

Getting a good one is the trick, unfortuanately may have to try several times. I finally gave up and put that on my do not buy list along with the Achilles tang which I have filled enough of. .

I have only had 1 that i've kept for long period of time and that's becuase was in a 320g tank with plenty of live food. I even trained it to eat prepared in quarantine before placing in there but once life food available he quickly became untrained. When downsized from that to a 125g no longer enought live food, wouldn't touch frozen even if it bonked it on the head and perished about 2 months later.

[eswebster]

Mine never touches corals and eats mysis..... you have to make them feed it at the store though.