Pyramid Butterflyfish - Medium

Pyramid Butterflyfish

The Pyramid Butterflyfish has yellowfins with a mostly white body. The white coloration forms a triangle with the yellowfins, lending it its common name. The head is dark brown to black in color which helps with camouflaging themselves in the wild.

These are schooling fish in the wild and so keeping a small group of them together is recommended. You should introduce them to the aquarium at the same time.

The Pyramid Butterflyfish lives in the central Indo Pacific region.

Tank Recommendations for Pyramid Butterflyfish

The Pyramid Butterflyfish is quite shy when first introduced to a new aquarium. For this reason, it should be provided many hiding places.

These Butterflyfish like other species are very sensitive to nitrate levels and so should be kept in an established tank. Ensure your tank nitrate levels are stable before adding your Butterflyfish.

The ideal aquarium will be at least 473 liters (125 gallons) and will contain plenty of live rock with algae growth. This will provide hiding places and a supplementary food source.

The Pyramid Butterflyfish generally inhabits the outer reef slopes where it can swim out into open water to get its food. For this reason, it will appreciate a larger aquarium with plenty of areas that it can freely swim. They also like to have areas in the aquarium that have a stronger water flow.

These fish are reef safe as they eat plankton and so shouldn’t be a problem with your corals. However if underfed the Yellow Pyramid Butterfly may occasionally pick at Xenia or other soft corals.

Suitable Tank Buddies

These are schooling fish and so keeping a number of them together is recommended, you can also keep them on their own or in pairs.

Usually Compatible

These are peaceful fish and will mix with most fish that aren’t likely to eat them, so Angelfish, Clownfish, Gobies, Dragonets, Parrotfish, and Puffers all will good tankmates for these Butterflyfish.

Sometime Compatible

These Butterflyfish are fine with other Pyramid Butterflyfish but be careful if keeping them with other types of Butterflyfish. Eels can be okay to keep them so long as the Butterflyfish aren’t too small and the eels aren’t too big as otherwise, they may eat them. Tangs, Scorpionfish, Damsels, Triggerfish, and Wrasses will usually not be a problem to keep with these fish.

Rarely Compatible

Grouper, Snappers, and Sharks are all likely to eat Butterflyfish so avoid them. Seahorses and Pipefish won’t appreciate the faster swimming Butterflyfish as tankmates either.

Feeding Your Pyramid Butterflyfish

The Pyramid Butterfly feeds upon plankton in the wild and will gather around coral reefs to feed on floating plankton.

In the aquarium, the Yellow Pyramid Butterflyfish diet should consist of frozen and freeze-dried foods containing algae. These can be supplemented with nori seaweed sheets and vitamin-enriched brine and mysis shrimp. It is likely that they will adapt to start accepting other foods being fed to tank mates.

These fish have rare feeding habits among butterflyfish, as they use the thread-like teeth in their small mouths known as gill rakers inside their gills that let them filter out the plankton from the water and then expel the water out through their gills without having to swallow the water.

Feeding several times daily is recommended which will help to prevent them from picking at your live corals.