Longnose butterfly safe with anemones, LPS, softies and stars??

Hey everybody, excited to finally have an account. Alright so for the longest time the longnose butterflyfish (Forcipiger flavissimus) has been one of my favorite looking fish, but Iv always been told that this fish cannot be kept in a reef tank successfully due to their " hunger for coral ". However, lately Iv been coming across people saying they can be kept in reef tank, but it is never stated which corals or inverts are safest with them
I currently have frogspawn, hammer, lots of zoas, rose bubble tip anemone, lots of various soft corals, 2 urchins ( blue tux + pincusion) and an orange sea star. Would a LNB destroy any of them, I truly dont mind some nipping here and there but I dont want to come home to all my inverts being devoured I realize that they eat fanworms/feather dusters, and there can be issues with clams, but I dont plan on keeping either of those animals in my tank.

P.S. the tank is 75 gallons, with 2x black clowns, tomini tang, lyretail anthias, melanaris wrasse, leopard wrasse, royal pencil wrasse, yellow banded possum wrasse, neon goby, PJ cardinal and a flame angel. Tanks doing awesome with my basketball sized cheato morpha and my oversized skimmer. All fish get along awesome and are doing great8)

 

It really depends on the fish. Someone will say they successfully kept a shark in a reeftank, but that doesn't mean anyone can tell you what they will or will not eat in your particular tank... I've seen a fair amount of longnose butterfly fish in reefs and they are definitely one of the most successful butterfly fish for reef tanks, but you won't know until you try it I think...

 

I know they are beautiful fish but I would save the trouble and not get it. Its a 50/50 chance with those things. Usually, they won't just have a nip here and a nip there. They will either not touch it or devour the thing. Just like a chocolate chip cookie. No one really takes just one tiny bite of one. They usually just go ahead and eat the whole thing. I guess its your decision in the end.....risk vs. reward!

 

Your bioload is already pretty large for that tank so I would say no for that reason alone.

 

I'm definitely agreeing with Vinny here, I see nothing but aggression issues.

 

IMO, you can never quite trust a butterfly in a reef. One day you will wake up and your corals will start disappearing.

If you are going to do it anyways, I would sleep with one eye open.

 

Yeah, you would think that. But there has not been a SINGLE sign of aggression from any of the fish at all, they all coexist peacefully with absolutely no issues. They all swim around together on one side of the tank. Some fish like my leopard wrasse and tomini seem to be buddies :2thumbsup So as far as aggression I believe 100% that the butterfly would join the group with no issues from the rest of the community.

 

Do you have any direct experiences with butterflies? I don't doubt your know knowledge I just know that this seems to be the go to answer as far as butterflies I actually had a yellow pyramid in my tank from liveaquaria for a couple days with no issues ( he arrived to my home with a massive black parasite on its side buried in a large wound and sadly died because of it

 

That was my general answer about butterflies. There are some butterfly's who eat a lot of corals. Some will eat them as a last resort. The copper band butterfly is accepted as a mostly reef safe aiptasia solution. But I also know people who have had bad experiences with them. If you like the longnose, I say get it. Just have a backup plan in case you need to re-home it. Please let us know how it works out.

 

One thing Im confused about is the fact that copperbands are usually noted as being almost completely reef safe most of the time, and yet the longnose butterfly, which is so closely related and has similar behavior, is always noted to being fairly " unsafe " with coral?