Howdy everyone!
Hope you all are doing well in this beautiful day. It has been few days that I am talking about some difficult fishes which are hard to keep right? Well keeping marine fish are always quite difficult.
I mean the maintenance of this aquariums are often quite expensive and challenging.
There are so many factors included which needs regular maintenance right?
Not everyone has that time or they don’t have the energy to provide so. Which eventually leads down to a failure of those tanks. So going into that marine hobby needs some experience indeed.
Our todays guest is the Copperband Butterfly fish.
Really cool fish right? I know you guys have seen this fish in a lot of advertisements and places related to fish as this fish are really pretty!
I use the consider this fish as the beginner fish to start with in the marine aquarium hobby but when I came down to know about this fishes fact, I was really amazed!
They seem very easy to keep but they are not!
They are considered one of the most difficult fish to keep in the aquarium hobby wolrd. Yes that’s true my friend!
Well the Copperband Butterfly fish is a saltwater fish which is found in the indo-pacific region. I know I know they are as similarly found like the other marine fish!
Don’t get bored hearing this indo-pacific region okay for now?
This saltwater fish are mostly found in coral reef seas where they roam around alone or in pairs. They are usually not schooling fish. So you won’t find them schooling around in groups.
This extremely beautiful fish has some
unique color pattern such as they have a white body. There are yellow straps over their body and there are basically one black band where the tail and the body joins.
An interesting fact is that they have a black dot over their dorsal fin. Do you think that is has no value?
Well I don’t think so!
Let me explain!
This Copperband Butterfly fish has some unique stripe pattern. The yellow stripes go through it’s eye. Let’s make it more easy for you. The yellow stripes the Copperhead have in it’s body, one of the stripes goes over it’s eye.
Which often confuses the predator fish to find out from which angel it should attack. In this situation the black dot of the dorsal fin helps it as it also helps confusing the predator as the predator might thinks that it’s the eye!
Cool right?
This Copperband Butterfly fish is usually very thin in shape but when buying you must see it accordingly.
Check the fins if they are damaged or not.
Although this fish are really thin in shape but
check out the belly if it’s shrink or not. If it’s look shrink, you might avoid buying that as it may be caused of this reason that it hasn’t eaten in a long time and this fish will eventually likely to die.
Check if the fish has white spot on it. White spot is a disease that is easy to cure from my experience I think but why should you buy a fish having diseases specially when it’s costing you nearly 300 bucks right?
Make sure to watch out for this situation properly.
Usually this Copperband Butterfly fish get’s around 8 inch’s in size when they grow up-to their maximum size! In terms of aggressiveness , this fish are really aggressive when it comes to keeping other butterfly fish in the tanks.
It is often recommended to have only one Copperband in a tank.
Feeding this fish can be really difficult
as this fish lives in the wild, They eat from corals, small vertebrates are also eaten. Moreover they have a habit of eating through corals and reefs. Which often creates problem in the captivity. You can give them foods such as shrimps, frozen Mysis and frozen brine shrimps. But it is best when it is served in the bottom of the aquarium.
I have seen reviews that they are extremely difficult to feed in captivity.
Also this fish are really hard to breed in captivity. Almost next to impossible!
If you know all the difficulties and still have the wish of buying one for yourself, Try to get the biggest tank you can afford. Atleast a 125 gallon tank will do well and the filtration system must be accurate!
You can add other tangs or unicorn fish as their tankmates but avoid having other copperhead in the tank. Try adding live corals as they will increase the beauty of your aquarium along with your fish will get a lot of hiding space.
But at the end if you are not an expert at marine tank, this fish are not recommended to keep inside your aquarium!