New Copperbanded Butterfly Won't Eat

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awillemd1

Aquarium Advice Activist
Joined
Aug 29, 2003
Messages
194
Location
Texas Gulf Coast
I purchased a Copperbanded Butterfly along with 2 small Percula Clowns on Saturday at the lfs and immediately placed them in a 10 gallon quarantine tank. :) All three of them seem to be doing well 4 days later, however, the Copperbanded Butterfly still hasn't eaten anything. :( I tried flake food, frozen mysis shrimp and just hatched (last night) brine shrimp with no success. :? He seemed a little interested in both the brine shrimp and the mysis shrimp, but I never saw him eat anything.

Is four days a little too soon to expect him to be acclamated? I figure the next thing I will try will be garlic extract (What is garlic extract? Does it come in a bottle?). I also plan to grow the brine shrimp by adding yeast as food to see if he will eat larger brine shrimp.

Thank you in advance for any help you can give.

awillemd1
 
This is a cyanide caught fish unless it is from Australia. It is probably internally damaged. You could try and get it to feed by purchasing a raw oyster and putting on the sand bed. They seem to love this. Leave it in the shell though. Good luck!
 
Thank you!! I will give it a try.

What does it mean when you say 'this is a cyanide caught fish ... it is probably internally damaged'? I have read this a lot, but I don't understand what this means exactly. Are most salt water fish cyanide caught? :? Why are people damaging these fish? :(

awillemd1
 
One of the problems with copperbands is the ability to get them to eat. Even cyanide caught fish of other species will eat, right up to the time they die. You may want to soak mysis in garlic and possibly that will help. Hopefully, if you have alot of critters on your live rock, it will eat some of those once it gets into your bigger tank. I always have the LFS feed the fish in front of me before I buy it. If it doesnt eat, it stays there.

People are using cyanide to catch the fish because it is the easiest, most inexpensive way to do it. They do it, because we buy them.
 
people shoot the cyanide in the water and it makes them easier to catch because they are stunned/hurt. "After a month or two, though, traces of cyanide in the fish's system often attack its liver, eat away at its digestive tract and corrode its respiratory system, until it dies. http://www.eces.org/archive/ec/np_articles/static/97461360011204.shtml
read that thatll tell you alot about cyanide fishing

i would reccomend buying tank raised fish they are generally more hardy.

Mr. Marine
 
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