🐠 Tear Drop Butterflyfish (Chaetodon unimaculatus)
Marine Not-Reef-Safe Butterflyfish • White-to-Yellow Body With a Bold Black Teardrop-Shaped Spot • Genuine Naming Overlap With the Yellow Teardrop Butterflyfish • Intermediate Marine Fish
 
📋 We want to be genuinely upfront on naming: this species is easily confused with its closely related counterpart, the Yellow Teardrop Butterflyfish (Chaetodon interruptus), which is overall yellow in colour rather than this species' white-to-yellow gradient.
 
📋 The Tear Drop Butterflyfish, also known as the Pacific Teardrop, Four Eyed, Limespot, or Onespot Butterflyfish, has a genuinely simple, elegant white body transitioning to yellow toward the dorsal side, with a large black teardrop-shaped eyespot in the midsection and bold vertical stripes at the anterior and posterior ends.
Native to the reefs of the Indo-Pacific through to Hawaii, this species inhabits reef and lagoon environments.
This is genuinely a hardy butterflyfish once properly acclimated, though we want to be honest that it can be timid at first and may refuse food during acclimation, sometimes requiring live brine or ghost shrimp to entice feeding for around a week before transitioning to frozen and prepared foods. It's genuinely peaceful toward its own kind and other species, doing well in a group if introduced simultaneously, though it should be housed with tank mates that won't bully it. We want to be upfront: this species is not reef safe, and will genuinely nip at soft corals and eat various invertebrates, though it's also genuinely documented consuming nuisance Aiptasia anemones.
 
⚫⚪ Highlights
🎨 White-Yellow Body With a Black Teardrop Spot: A genuinely simple, elegant butterflyfish
🔍 Genuine Naming Overlap: Easily confused with the Yellow Teardrop Butterflyfish
🦐 Genuine Aiptasia Control: Documented consuming this common nuisance anemone
⚠️ Not Reef Safe: Will nip at soft corals and eat various invertebrates
🙈 Genuinely Timid at First: May require live foods initially to establish feeding