Copperband Butterfly feeding when away?

[JVU]

My new Copperband Butterfly from Erin is doing great and eating well. Eats frozen Hikari mysis and LRS Reef Frenzy with gusto. Doesn’t seem interested at all in a variety of pellets and flakes I feed the other fish.

Wondering what dry (non-frozen) foods might be worth trying out to make feeding when I’m out of town easier? Has anyone had specific success?

I haven’t really seen it pick at stuff in rocks/sand though I have lots of bristleworms and other critters.

 

[Coral reefer]

Not what you asked but fridge feeder isn’t too hard to rig up

 

[Coral reefer]

@CaseyP uses freeze dried mysis for seahorses. Might be worth a shot

 

[CaseyP]

I have freeze dried mysis (SF Bay Brand) on an auto feeder. My copperband is a little bit finicky with them but will take a bite here and there. @derek_SR I believe has had luck with his CBB eating it.

 

[gmdcdvm]

Following along since I would like to add one, but need one that is lower maintenance.
G

 

[JVU]

I have freeze dried mysis (SF Bay Brand) on an auto feeder. My copperband is a little bit finicky with them but will take a bite here and there. @derek_SR I believe has had luck with his CBB eating it.

Thanks. I bought some and I’ll try it.

 

[CaseyP]

The drawback to freeze dried foods is it tends to float. This syringe trick works great:

Using a Syringe to Get Freeze Dried Food to Sink Immediately

I can't take credit for coming up with method, somebody posted this back in 2012 on the planted tank forum, but it's been very useful for me so I figured I would share. You can use a syringe to immediately make freeze dried food sink by sucking the air out of it. I find a 20ml disposable...

humble.fish

With my Avast Plank auto feeder, I have it dispense into the mixing tube an hour before the mixing/dispensing pump turns on to give it time to soak.

 

[JVU]

I have a Plank feeder that I haven’t bothered to set up yet, this’ll be my motivation to do it now. That and that the badly designed Neptune one dumped a bunch of food in my tank again Sat.

 

[derek_SR]

The SF Bay mysis is great - very chunky, very cheap. Note that with the plank you need to run it for very long periods to get enough mysis to vend (I do like 1min+ each time). And if you try to mix pellets, the pellets will quickly settle to the bottom and then a shitload will come out w/ the long run times.

The "Reef Jerky" from Avast also has stuff my CBB eats, along with some other smaller particles. It's a lot more expensive though.

 

[Gudhjem]

My CBB eats freeze dried mysis. I soak it first, but I think it would work using the Plank or just dropping into a feeding tube.

 

[Darkxerox]

I have a Plank feeder that I haven’t bothered to set up yet, this’ll be my motivation to do it now. That and that the badly designed Neptune one dumped a bunch of food in my tank again Sat.

Let us know how it goes as someone who hasn't used one before. Might need to get one myself.

 

[JVU]

The drawback to freeze dried foods is it tends to float. This syringe trick works great:

Using a Syringe to Get Freeze Dried Food to Sink Immediately

I can't take credit for coming up with method, somebody posted this back in 2012 on the planted tank forum, but it's been very useful for me so I figured I would share. You can use a syringe to immediately make freeze dried food sink by sucking the air out of it. I find a 20ml disposable...

humble.fish

With my Avast Plank auto feeder, I have it dispense into the mixing tube an hour before the mixing/dispensing pump turns on to give it time to soak.

The syringe trick works great, thank you for that link. I especially like that it uses Science.

My CBB seems less impressed by it than I am so far. But I think I’m making progress by mixing reconstituted freeze dried mysis with frozen mysis in a single feeding.

 

[TheRealMadMax]

I have a Plank feeder that I haven’t bothered to set up yet, this’ll be my motivation to do it now. That and that the badly designed Neptune one dumped a bunch of food in my tank again Sat.

I’m switching all my auto feeders to the Plank. So much better designed. Once I didn’t get the drum fully latched in and when it went to feed the whole thing pitched into the tank. Talk about a mess.

 

[TheRealMadMax]

Not what you asked but fridge feeder isn’t too hard to rig up

I have a fridge for dosing Reef Nutrition (Oyster, Phyto & Roti) using DOS pumps and a fridge with a voided warranty. What fish foods are you fridge feeding?

 

[Coral reefer]

Aqua forest mysis

 

[PjFish]

The syringe trick works great, thank you for that link. I especially like that it uses Science.

My CBB seems less impressed by it than I am so far. But I think I’m making progress by mixing reconstituted freeze dried mysis with frozen mysis in a single feeding.

Hows the progress? Mine finally started eating freeze dried mysis but had to compete against everyone else so I added freeze dried cyclops also which is alot smaller

 

[JVU]

Hows the progress? Mine finally started eating freeze dried mysis but had to compete against everyone else so I added freeze dried cyclops also which is alot smaller

My CBB continues to eat frozen mysis (Hikari) great. He’s now reliably also eating rehydrated freeze-dried mysis (SF Bay Brand) every day. So is everyone else.

When I rehydrate manually with the cool syringe trick (using RODI) I can see for myself that he’s eating. When I just put it in a feeder ring and let it rehydrate slowly over the hours I can’t tell since I’m not watching. And some of it doesn’t rehydrate anyway. I’ve just been doing the 10 second syringe trick every day, but this isn’t practical for when I’m out of town. I haven’t set up the Plank with mysis yet.

 

[richiev]

My CBB continues to eat frozen mysis (Hikari) great. He’s now reliably also eating rehydrated freeze-dried mysis (SF Bay Brand) every day. So is everyone else.

When I rehydrate manually with the cool syringe trick (using RODI) I can see for myself that he’s eating. When I just put it in a feeder ring and let it rehydrate slowly over the hours I can’t tell since I’m not watching. And some of it doesn’t rehydrate anyway. I’ve just been doing the 10 second syringe trick every day, but this isn’t practical for when I’m out of town. I haven’t set up the Plank with mysis yet.

I'll be interested to see how you like and setup the plank. It seems like it should work well for what you're hoping to do. I'm using it on my frag tank, dumping straight into the return section where I also have a mini, cheap, powerhead circulating.

I no longer use the avast hydration pump setup since switching to this. Main reason is the tube didn't reach my water line, and seemed irrelevant compared to this current setup anyway. The avast going into the actual tank I can't get behind anymore, since it's a big tube and big device. I had it on the frag tank previously though and it seemed to work well.

I feed the reef jerky mixed with a bunch of freeze dried mysis.

 

[PjFish]

@richiev do you have a cbb in your frag which is why ur feeding freeze dried ?

 

[PjFish]

I really don’t want to have an extra feeder souly for the cbb dumping freeze dried down a tube that has a few holes at the end and is capped so only the ccb can reach lol.. Hopefully the fish will jump on board soon!!