Guest Tranman July 10, 2007 Share July 10, 2007 (edited) This thread was moved from the for sale forum as Peter brought the butterfly over to my house to see if it would eat aiptasia Hi, I have a 4 inch RedFin Butterfly Fish for sale. I cannot keep it for I don't know what he eats. I just received him this past friday 7/06/07. I've tried feeding him everything under the sun... -Formula II flakes -Frozen Mysis Shrimp -Bloodworms -Nori Seaweed -Live Brine Shrimp -Angel Food sponges -Fresh live clam All soaked in Garlix Xtreme... He will not eat. If anyone who's more experienced and would like to take it off my hand for $20 bucks. Please let me know. Here's some pics of the RedFin. http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&...erfly&gbv=2 Thanks. Edited July 11, 2007 by davelin315 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbartco July 10, 2007 Share July 10, 2007 obligate corallivour http://www.edge-of-reef.com/Chetodontidi/C...fasciatusen.htm Why don't you let someone try to keep alive, and if they do, then get your $$ out of them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bk_market July 10, 2007 Share July 10, 2007 Is this fish reef safe? if so im interested Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smarsh97 July 10, 2007 Share July 10, 2007 It is not reef safe. It's main diet is coral polyps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Tranman July 10, 2007 Share July 10, 2007 It is not reef safe. It's main diet is coral polyps. Does anyone have any dying, small or unattractive corals (sps) they want to sell for cheap? I'm Trying to get the food for the Redfin butterfly. Again...20 bucks for him...and it's a coral feeder. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davelin315 July 10, 2007 Share July 10, 2007 I wonder if he'd eat aiptasia. If you want to try it, I'd be willing to either try and keep it alive for you or possibly buy it from you if it eats aiptasia. I have some rock that needs to have the aiptasia cut down from it and although it's not coral, it could suffice (the mouth looks somewhat similar to a raccoon butterfly from Doug's referenced website). http://www.wetwebmedia.com/poorchaetodons.htm Says it never lives in captivity but one of the related fish eats anemones, if you want to try him out with me, I'll take him in but can't afford to buy him if he's just going to die. Let me know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sleeper July 11, 2007 Share July 11, 2007 Ok, you've got one guy with a coralivore, another with a coral surplus.... http://www.wamas.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=15568 Lets get together, people of DC!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbartco July 11, 2007 Share July 11, 2007 it eats the small polyps of stony corals. I wish it were that easy... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Tranman July 11, 2007 Share July 11, 2007 HA!! If it eats Xenias...I would have NO problem with that. I have lots in my tank. According to all the sites I researched, it only eats small polyps of stony corals like dbartco said. davelin315, I might take you up on that offer. If it eats your aiptasia, you can keep it for $20 bucks or return it back to me. If it dies I'm covered under Saltwaterfish.com 15 days garuantee. I REALLY REALLY REALLY don't want him to perish tho. A beautiful to be lost. You're right, they should sell me a fish that would eat what they say it would eat...in this case...clams. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lanman July 11, 2007 Share July 11, 2007 He'd be in heaven in my frag tank... I just gave away a fair-sized frag of indeterminate color. Want some pieces of blue-tip staghorn to feed him? hehehehe... an interesting dilemma; doesn't anyone have some plain brown monti digi they want to feed this poor fish? (I do, if I could figure out how to get the whole thing loose). That is one beautiful fish - you just need to get him some coral. bob Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davelin315 July 11, 2007 Share July 11, 2007 HA!! If it eats Xenias...I would have NO problem with that. I have lots in my tank. According to all the sites I researched, it only eats small polyps of stony corals like dbartco said. davelin315, I might take you up on that offer. If it eats your aiptasia, you can keep it for $20 bucks or return it back to me. If it dies I'm covered under Saltwaterfish.com 15 days garuantee. I REALLY REALLY REALLY don't want him to perish tho. A beautiful to be lost. You're right, they should sell me a fish that would eat what they say it would eat...in this case...clams. Let me know, it's worth a shot. Aiptasia anemones are distant relatives of coral polyps anyway so you never know, if it gets hungry enough, it just might decide to snack. If it munches on any of the zoanthids in there, you might find other customers for its services as well. I'm normally home throughout the day but can't always get out since I have the kids all day. I'll be home tomorrow afternoon, though, as I'm expecting a shipment in and want to try and work on my stand some more as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Tranman July 11, 2007 Share July 11, 2007 Dave, You're right, it's worth a go. I can't do anything else for the poor . Heck, I even tried droppin in some fish roe...that's some expensive stuff for a little bit of it! He looks at the food like I look at the wall...nothing. PM me with your address... I can stop by tomorrow between 11am-3pm..? Would that work? Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davelin315 July 11, 2007 Share July 11, 2007 PMd you my address. The time sounds fine. Give me a call when you're on your way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davelin315 July 11, 2007 Share July 11, 2007 Peter brought it over to my house today to see if it would eat aiptasia. I did a quick acclimation for it and put it into the system and one of the first things it did was pick over the rock a few times and also pick at a mushroom. I tried to target feed some cyclopeeze as well, but it didn't touch any of that. It's now simply swimming around and trying to check out the surroundings. The copperband is a bit apprehensive but no aggression has occurred. I'll keep my eye out on this guy to see if it will eat aiptasia and hopefully train it over to eating other things as well. Keeping my fingers crossed! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Tranman July 11, 2007 Share July 11, 2007 Well Dave, Thanks for taking over this frustrating process here. I might have to pay YOU a training fee if you get it trained to eat something else. He's colorful and healthy otherwise but is degrading slowly. Keep me updated. Appreciate it! btw...MONSTER tank you have man. Gotta see it when you have it all set up in the future. Peter Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davelin315 July 13, 2007 Share July 13, 2007 OK, have not seen it eat in the past 24 hours and have tried pretty much the same battery of things that Peter did. I also tried taking a dead coral frag and freezing cyclopeez to it and also jammed some mysis into it as well. The one thing that I did notice is that it is looking for food and is biting on some red coralline on a specific rock. I may try and stick some food to that to see what results that has. Not sure what it's picking at or if it's scraping pods off of it but hopefully I'll find out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Tranman July 13, 2007 Share July 13, 2007 Dave, I have a piece of live rock in my QT tank that I transferred from my DT. It was also picking on the rock for a bit...just a bit. I wonder if that's sustaining him so far. How long do you think until the :( inevitable :( happens? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flowerseller July 13, 2007 Share July 13, 2007 How long do you think until the :( inevitable :( happens? 16 days from when you got it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davelin315 July 13, 2007 Share July 13, 2007 Well, if it gets close to d-day and it still hasn't eaten and doesn't appear to be near death I'll start to force feed it. That'll either kill it or sustain it as a last resort. Honestly, it's a beautiful fish and it actually comes up to look at me, kind of like saying it wants to be fed... it really spends a lot of time examining the rock and looking for food. Let's hope that it starts eating something! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Connor July 13, 2007 Share July 13, 2007 how do you force feed a fish? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davelin315 July 13, 2007 Share July 13, 2007 You basically have to force a tube down into it's mouth and get it positioned correctly where it will go down it's throat and then you can pump food down there. It's obviously much more difficult with smaller fish due to their smaller mouths... You can also just jam food into its mouth and hope that it decides to swallow whatever is in there. I did this with a sick clown for a while but you have to basically use very liquid food or you might damage the gills. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hbh July 13, 2007 Share July 13, 2007 Any updates/news? Hopefully good!? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davelin315 July 13, 2007 Share July 13, 2007 After working on my stand and getting the tank leveled on it I tried some feeding again. I offered a variety of foods again and jammed some into the dead coral that I've been dropping food into. The butterfly is actually following the copperband around so I'm hoping it's taking notes and learns to eat from watching the copperband pick up mysis. On a bad note, it still didn't eat anything and it's starting to exhibit some weird actions. I wonder if this fish was possibly caught with cyanide on top of everything else as it's doing some head shakes. Not sure where in the world this particular specimen is from as there are a few different kinds that are very similar in appearance and behavior or it might help to determine if there is something else working against the fish in this case, although these actions could also be from a lack of food. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lanman July 13, 2007 Share July 13, 2007 After working on my stand and getting the tank leveled on it I tried some feeding again. I offered a variety of foods again and jammed some into the dead coral that I've been dropping food into. The butterfly is actually following the copperband around so I'm hoping it's taking notes and learns to eat from watching the copperband pick up mysis. On a bad note, it still didn't eat anything and it's starting to exhibit some weird actions. I wonder if this fish was possibly caught with cyanide on top of everything else as it's doing some head shakes. Not sure where in the world this particular specimen is from as there are a few different kinds that are very similar in appearance and behavior or it might help to determine if there is something else working against the fish in this case, although these actions could also be from a lack of food. Do you have any CORAL in there for it to eat?? bob Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davelin315 July 13, 2007 Share July 13, 2007 Nope, no one who has excess corals stepped up to the plate to offer some up to Peter so I offered to try the next best thing. Obviously it's long term life will depend on it becoming trained to eat offered foods rather than corals as I don't think anyone has such prolific growth that they can afford to let this fish be in their reef. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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