Reticulated Butterfly
Photo by Keoki Stender
Common Names: Reticulated Butterfly
Hawaiian Name: None Known
Scientific Name: Chaetodon reticulatus
(Cuvier & Valenciennes, 1931)
Source Info: Fishes of Hawaii by Spencer W. Tinker
As you can see from the photo, the Reticulated Butterfly is a breathtaking fish with its netlike pattern and its black, white, yellow and red colors.
It is a Butterfly Fish that can grow to a large size of about 6 inches. We've seen a few of them up to about 8 inches. The few we have seen or collected have always been single. You can find them in groups or schools in some tropical waters around the world, but that is not a sight we see here in Hawaii.
We have seen this species in shallower waters of about 10 feet out to depths of 70 feet. When caught at deeper depths it is hard to decompress. The distribution of this species extends from Hawaii and Japan southward to central Polynesia and westward through Micronesia, Melanesia, the East Indies, and across the Bay of Bengal to India.
It is one of the fish in the Butterfly Fish Family that is a coral eater and it is difficult to get it to eat anything else, especially as an adult. Charles Delbeek shared with us that because it is an obligate coral eating Butterfly it does not survive for long in aquaria in his experience. It is a fish that we have not collected often, only five since1989, and few years ago we removed this fish off of our price list for sale. The few we had collected were for advanced aquarists only that we had dealt with for years. It is one of the Butterflies that is extremely sensitive and hard to care for. If you happen to see one in a Pet Shop, this is a fish we would only recommend for an extremely advanced aquarists.
