New Copperband Butterfly started scratching

[jy808]

Hi Guys,

I pulled the trigger and bought myself a copperband butterfly today whilst at the LFS. They are a beautiful fish and has been on my wish list. Prior to purchasing I have done ALOT of research and understand that they are very difficult. Part of me wanted to get into a more challenging task, which made me purchase one today.

So coming home from the LFS it's being acclimated in the QT, after it's in the QT I can see it scratching against a rock. My QT is only 14 gallons, a very small QT. I do know they require a much larger tank, but this is the only QT I have for all my fish. Despite this I still intend to do the full QT in the 14g. Is this a good idea or no?

The scratching could either be flukes or white spots developing. There are no signs showing of any spots at the moment. So I will wait till tomorrow to see what shows up. I haven't done a freshwater dip yet, should I have done this before going into the QT. I was just afraid of it stressing so much already.

As I know they are a very hardy fish to keep and maintain, I am watching my every.single. move. and asking for assistance and steps from experiences owners of the copperband butterfly so that it can go into my DT healthy!

 

[Manuel935]

In my experience, every time I bring a new fish home from the lfs it always does the same thing, in my opinion I believe it just stress from moving to the new tank so I would wait a couple days before you start dosing it, because that may just make it worse, I also find they act this way when they weren't properly drip acclimated which again just causes a bit of stress for them, but I would just monitor and if in a couple of days he still hasn't any better then i would start dosing, but that's just me, I know CBB could be pretty frail so good luck, hopefully everything works out.

 

[StatelineReefer]

Let your CBB rest tonight in the QT tank, then tomorrow, do your freshwater dip or hyposalinity dip, observe, monitor, and decide from there... if flukes fall right off it's gills in the fw, begin treatment, otherwise, observe, that's what quarantine is for.

Scratching against stuff seems to be like a nervous tic for butterflies, my raccoon did it for weeks, even though he had no parasites whatsoever.