butterflies

[flux]

Im in the planning phase of setting up a 75-90gal FOWLR tank. The main thing I want is butterflies. My first choice is a copper banded butterfly, but I was also thinking about a heniochus (its resemblance to an idol is a plus). Would the copper banded go after the heniochus? I was also concerned about the heniochus fin getting nipped. For tank mates I was looking into tangs, dwarf angle, fuzzy dwarf lion, and a snowflake eel. Any suggestions on what to stay away from would be helpful. Don’t want that nice long fin getting all ripped up.

 

[jon321]

I see a few problems with your choice of fish. First off I would scrap the lion and eel, they make WAY too much waste and butterflies (in particular the copperband) need PERFECT water, read <10 nitrate. I would also skip the tang, I had a yellow tang beat a dot-dash butterfly to death in a few days and the butterfly was well established. For butterflies your basically stuck to small, peaceful fish, or other dissimilar butterflies. Chromis, gobies, firefish, dwarf angel, boxfish, cardinals, some wrasses, etc. It will be alot easier in the long run this way.
Jon

 

[flux]

School of chromis might be cool. Would a long nose hawk fish be ok or to aggressive? I hear lots of mixed opinions on them. Thanks for the help.

 

[jon321]

The hawkfish itself would be fine, but the problem is hawkfish tend to eat shrimp in the aquarium, and you want a couple cleaner shrimp for those butterflyfish. If I were you Id go with 2-4 butterflies, a dwarf angel, and a school of 5-6 chromis or cardinals plus mabe a blenny or something.
Jon

 

[flux]

Do cardinals schools as well as chromis? If I go with multiple butterflies are there any that get aggressive with their own kind that I should stay away from?

 

[jon321]

Yes cardinals school like chromis, but they are more stationary and kind of just hover or float in one place whereas chromis are actively swimming. In the 75-90g range, Im thinking that few butterflies would not act aggressively with their own kind, but you could get a couple different looking butterflies. For example, lets say: 1 threadfin, 1 copperband, 1 pearscale, and 1 heniochus. Although some like the heniochus, pakistani, lemon, pyramid, and golden are active schoolers. And from my experience the yellow longnose butterfly and racoon butterfly tend to be more aggressive towards other butterflies than most.
You can look here for a long list of hardy butterflies:
http://www.wetwebmedia.com/Goodchaetodon.htm
I would look here for in depth copperband info as they are a very challenging species to maintain.
http://www.wetwebmedia.com/chelmonfaqs.htm
Jon

 

[tangey]

I have a Yellow Tang with a Pearlscale butterfly and actually the butterfly dominates. alos they are bothe about 3-4 inches. maybe that helps? :help:

 

[jon321]

hmm thats interesting...i wonder how pearlscales compare to dot-dash aggression wise.
Jon

 

[dougai]

a set of heniochus would be awesome, like 3 of them so they school
and then some nice smaller complimentary fish
like small with lots of color so that its very lively
*lots of caves so smaller fish can be swimming in and out and the schooling heniochus would be great to watch