🐠 Blackback Butterflyfish (Chaetodon melannotus)
A Silvery-White Body With Bold Diagonal Black Stripes • A Yellow Face, Snout and Fins • A Peaceful, Hardy Fish-Only Display Fish
 
📋 The Blackback Butterflyfish is an attractive marine butterflyfish with a silvery-white body crossed by diagonal black stripes, a black eye band, and a yellow face, snout, and fins.
It comes from lagoon patch reefs, reef flats, and fore-reef slopes across the Indo-Pacific, from the Red Sea and East Africa to Japan and Micronesia, feeding almost exclusively on soft coral polyps in the wild, along with smaller amounts of stony coral polyps, anemones, and algae. Every Blackback Butterflyfish we ship is feeding well.
It's not reef safe, since it will nip at and eat soft corals, stony coral polyps, anemones, tube worms, and ornamental shrimp, so it's best suited to a fish-only or FOWLR aquarium rather than a coral display. It's naturally peaceful and hardy once settled, readily adapting to captivity and a varied diet, though it can show some aggression toward other butterflyfish of similar pattern or colouration in smaller tanks. It reaches up to 15cm, so plan on at least 210L.
 
💡 Highlights
🎨 Silvery Body With Diagonal Black Stripes: A striking, classic pattern with yellow fins
💪 Hardy and Adaptable: Readily accepts a wide variety of foods once settled
🪸 Not Reef Safe: Will eat soft and stony coral polyps, anemones, and tube worms
😌 Peaceful Temperament: Gets along well with non-aggressive tankmates
🍽️ Ships Feeding Well: A confident eater from day one