Schooling bannerfish

Care at a glance

Overview

The schooling bannerfish is a peaceful shoaling fish for a large saltwater tank. It is easy to keep.

Caring for the schooling bannerfish

A single schooling bannerfish needs at least 124 gal (470 L), and a school needs considerably more space to spread out. Give them a long, open tank with plenty of vertical swimming room, plus live rock for shelter at night. They are reef safe and generally leave corals, anemones and gorgonians alone as long as they are well fed. A hungry fish may pick at ornamental shrimp or other small invertebrates.

Keep the water at 75 to 81°F (24 to 27°C) with a pH of 8.1 to 8.4. They adapt to aquarium life more readily than most butterflyfish and accept frozen mysis, krill and other prepared foods without much fuss. Feed them two or three times a day, given how much they eat in the wild.

Schooling bannerfish are peaceful with other fish. Keep them in a group introduced to the tank at the same time, and they will shoal together rather than fight over territory. Look closely at what you are buying, since telling them from longfin bannerfish takes a side-by-side look.

Good to know

The schooling bannerfish, Heniochus diphreutes, is a member of the family Chaetodontidae. It carries the long, trailing white dorsal filament and bold black-and-white banding typical of its genus. Its resemblance to the unrelated Zanclus cornutus gives it the nicknames false Moorish idol and poor man's Moorish idol. Compared with its relative the longfin bannerfish, Heniochus acuminatus, it has a rounder chest profile and a shorter snout. Unlike that relative, it is a dedicated open-water plankton feeder rather than a bottom-picking generalist.

In the wild

The schooling bannerfish ranges across the Indo-Pacific, from East Africa and the Red Sea to Polynesia and Hawaii. Its range runs north to southern Japan and south to the Kermadec Islands. It lives over deep reef slopes and drop-offs, where it gathers in large aggregations to feed on plankton in the current. It spends most of the day swimming well off the bottom.

Common questions

Related species

• 

  Longfin bannerfish

  Heniochus acuminatus

  9.8 in (25 cm) · 127 gal (480 L)

  9.8 in (25 cm)127 gal (480 L)75–81°F (24–27°C)

• 

  Big longnose butterflyfish

  Forcipiger longirostris

  8.7 in (22 cm) · 100 gal (380 L)

  8.7 in (22 cm)100 gal (380 L)73–81°F (23–27°C)

• 

  Copperband butterflyfish

  Chelmon rostratus

  7.9 in (20 cm) · 79 gal (300 L)

  7.9 in (20 cm)79 gal (300 L)75–81°F (24–27°C)

• 

  Golden butterflyfish

  Chaetodon semilarvatus

  9.1 in (23 cm) · 151 gal (570 L)

  9.1 in (23 cm)151 gal (570 L)75–82°F (24–28°C)

• 

  Black pyramid butterflyfish

  Hemitaurichthys zoster

  7.1 in (18 cm) · 106 gal (400 L)

  7.1 in (18 cm)106 gal (400 L)75–81°F (24–27°C)

• 

  Pyramid butterflyfish

  Hemitaurichthys polylepis

  7.1 in (18 cm) · 124 gal (470 L)

  7.1 in (18 cm)124 gal (470 L)75–81°F (24–27°C)