Golden Butterfly

[Mike612]

I just bought a Golden Butterfly from my local fish store 2 weeks ago. It
was doing well at the store (eating, swimming properly, aware of my
presence) and so I decided I'd add it to my 75 gallon (4 year old aquarium
which has fish, inverts, about 80 pounds of live rock, and a few coral).
It adjusted quickly and it was eating the day I put him in also. The past
couple of days, I've just noticed that he hasn't been as active as he
usually is. He's been eating frozen mysid shrimp, frozen brine shrimp,
copepods (he's been picking at the rocks), and he's been eating one of my
two brain coral (don't really know why he picks at one but not the other).

He's still aware of my presence but he hasn't been swimming very much or picking at the rocks or anything. I haven't seen any aggression towards him and most of my fish are friendly. The only time I've seen him "attacked" was by my Kole Tang protecting it's territory at the back of the tank. That's about it. Does anybody have any ideas about what is going on with this little guy? Also, he didn't take any food yesterday (might be because it was spirulina formula and not the frozen shrimp like it likes but it still usually at least nibbles and this time it didn't).

Thanks,

Mike

 

[Mike612]

Alright he's no longer interested in the frozen mysid shrimp. What's going on? The parameters are normal and there's no sign of disease to me. My brain coral seems to be getting eaten by the night though so I'm assuming he picked at it just when my moonbeams were on because I haven't seen him pick at it when the lights have been on lately. Like I said, he's been pretty still and has been staying in the same spots. Help please.

 

[Anonymous]

How big are your Chaetodon semilarvatus (Butterflyfish) and your Ctenochaetus strigosus (Kole Tang)?
Having those two fish together in a 75 gal tank is enough to cause stress.
Try feeding your Butterflyfish a more varied diet consisting of chopped squid, mussels, shrimp, clam, etc. soaked in a product such as Selcon along with frozen preparations for herbivores at least 3 times a day. You may have to remove one or the other fish as it appears that your Butterfly is taking a turn for the worse if it continues to go on a hunger strike.

guest

 

[Mike612]

The Kole Tang (7 inches) is a bit bigger than the butterfly (about 4 or 5 inches) and really I don't think it has anything to do with the Tang. He's really not getting attacked that often. I'll prepare some food dipped in selcon. What would make a fish change like this though? I could understand a little stress but like I said I'm pretty sure it's not the tang. I just mentioned it to show that he has been a bit attacked but even when the tang "attacks" the butterfly, it doesn't cause damage. The tang doesn't try to nip the butterfly or slash it with it's spine. It just chases him out of his little hideout.

 

[FragMaster]

Try some beef heart, or cracked mussles or clam strips for the butterfly.
I know I have said this a thousand times but have you treid garlic soaked foods yet to get him toeat? ( It works fo rme everytime with just about ANY fish I cant get to eat..there are exceptions ofcourse)

The Tang could be striking at night now also ( when they find a nice little place to rest for the night on the rock work). They arent that agressive but they will run intruders off from thier side of the reef at night especialy if they are larger. Are there any marks on him from the tangs barb?

 

[Mike612]

I was speaking to my friend about this and he seems to think that it might be an osmosis problem (i think that's what it's called). This means that the salinity level might not be right for him in the tank. The salinity level is at 1.025 which is like the lowest you can go with a red sea fish like this but i did add some more saltwater to raise it to 1.026. That's really the most I could do with the salt because any higher can be dangerous to my other fish. I'll see how he is in the morning.

 

[FragMaster]

Specific gravity, conductivity, and refractive index as a function of salinity of seawater.


Salinity (PSU) Specific Gravity Conductivity Refractive Index
at 25° C3 (mS/cm; 25° C)3 (20° C)1



0 1.0000 0 1.33300
30 1.0226 46.2 1.33851
31 1.0233 47.6 1.33869
32 1.0241 49.0 1.33886
33 1.0249 50.4 1.33904
34 1.0256 51.7 1.33922
35 1.0264 53.0 1.33940
36 1.0271 54.4 1.33958 37 1.0279 55.7 1.33994
38 1.0286 57.1 1.34012
39 1.0294 58.4 1.34031


In bold are the red sea salinity swings. 1.026 ( what you said it is at now) wont even make them "twitch". These fish are used to gradual swings.
Your other fish should be fine in the same range realy.
The tropical indo pacific ranges from 1.022 - 1.025.
The western atlantic around the caribbean has high salinity as well.
Your fish and your redsea butterfly will be fine at 1.026.

 

[EmilyB]

I've had a Red Sea Golden Butterfly for years and salinity doesn't seem that much of an issue as mine has crept down to 1.022 at times.

She eats a ton of nori for grazing, and I can hand feed her aiptasia rock.
Put in some xenia as well for her to munch.

New butterflys seem to easily get stressed ime, move some rock around to confuse your tang.

 

[Mike612]

Unfortunately, the butterfly died over night. Now my only assumption is that maybe it wasn't caught properly. I'm thinking it may have been cyanide or some other poor method of capturing because there were no signs of exterior diseases like ich and he was still fat. The only thing really that showed me that he was ill was that he wasn't swimming very much and he wasn't eating. That's not much to go on.

 

[Riptide10]

Sorry to hear about that. Hard to say for sure what happened there. Always sucks to lose a fish, especially a rare and expensive one like a semilarvatus.