Last Tuesday (12/11/07) I received two clutches of cuttlefish eggs. Each had 10 eggs, but 3 out of the 20 were deflated leaving me 17. They are in 2 separate net breeders right now, one has more light and flow than the other. I want to see if that makes a difference in activity, growth rate, and willingness to use chromatophores. Both net breeders have some feather caulerpa and another kind of macroalgae in them for hiding.

My first hatchling was today (12/16/07), well probably last night, since I noticed him at about noon today. He is pretty shy. I wouldn't even have known he had hatched if I hadn't searched for him. I pulled out at least 50% of the macro in each net breeder because I was having a pretty hard time finding him. Now he hides under the piece of rubble in there *sigh*. He is already changing colors from white to brown, flashing at me when I push him out from under the rock. It was hard to get pictures of him and I was trying to get some of him brown, but I couldn't. I am getting a new camera tomorrow and it is much nicer than the one I have now, so it should be able to take better pictures. It also takes video, so I will be able to get some video as well.

I got some Mysids from work, I plan on ordering in lots from aquaculturestore.com when more hatch. I haven't seen him eat yet, but I expect he still has some of his yolk sac. I threw in probably about 5 mysids. He has been pretty lethargic so far today. I hope he is not sick, but I'm sure that's just me worrying :).

Here's some pics:

The first two are from today, the last 2 are of each net breeder the day I received the eggs.

Awwww....how cute and congrats!!!:baby:

What type are they?

S. Bandensis. If I had the money and the space I would try to get Pharonis, Officinalis, or Apama; maybe in a few years.

Thanks for the congrats :). I hope I can provide them a good home.

The newborns don't move around too much, so don't worry about him being lethargic. :baby: congratulations!

Nice! Glad you could get some!

With the holiday season happening, double check your sources for mysids and make sure you get them before you need them!

Thanks. I'll make sure I have a reliable source throughout the holidays, thanks for the advice.

:welcome: :cuttle:!

Congratulations! :)

Good luck with your cuttle eggs and the little cuttles!

Just a question - are the photos you posted only of the eggs, or is the little cuttle in there somewhere and I just don't see it?

Nancy

Good luck with your cuttle eggs and the little cuttles!

Just a question - are the photos you posted only of the eggs, or is the little cuttle in there somewhere and I just don't see it?

Nancy

I think there's a tiny white cuttle in the center of each of the top 2 pics, unless I'm hallucinating again...

Thanks all!

Nancy- Monty is right. In the top two pictures there is my only baby so far (I expect to have at least one more tomorrow). He is in between the caulerpa to the right of the pipet. It was hard to get a good picture because the caulerpa didn't want to stay down, my camera is chunky and hard to use with one hand, and the cuttle kept moving. I was trying to get a picture of him changing colors, but he was too quick and it was too tough to even get regular pictures.

OK, I see it now!
Nancy

Congrats on the cuttles. Thats a lot of eggs!
Where did you end up getting them from?

Thanks, I got them from seacrop. Thanks to a tip from Thales :).

Three more hatched last night; one in net 1 (first cuttle for that cluster), and 2 more in net 2. I am going to call aquaculturestore.com tomorrow and order mysids. I still haven't seen any of the cuttles eat. The two cuttles that hatched in net 2 hatched between 1130 pm (lights out) and 1230 am (I peeked :)). The cuttle in net 1 hatched between 1 and 7 am. The cuttle in net 1 looks smaller than any of the 3 that have hatched in net 2. He also keeps a mottled golden-brown coloration during resting while the other cuttles stay white. It will be interesting to see if the entire cluster has different coloration.

Pictures! Camera didn't come today, sorry they are still kinda blurry. Pictures were easier to take than yesterday, however. The first two are of Net 2, which has 3 cuttles. I can tell the difference between the new ones and the one a day old! I circled one of them because he is really blurry and hides under the rock all day. The other is hiding behind his older brother under the plastic support. The 2nd one is of my only hatchling so far in net 1, again sorry for the blurriness.

Thanks, I got them from seacrop. Thanks to a tip from Thales :).
.

Hehe that tip came from me to thales =)

Congrats on the eggs. I know youve been wanting some for a while. Since they are seasonal, we may be hitting a dry period again for a while. Good luck with your!

Interesting that you can see the color difference you mentioned even in the photos. I will also be interesting to see if the color difference remains over the next couple of weeks.

Well then thank you for the pass along Paradox. And thanks for the congratulations.

Another cuttle from net 2 hatched the night of the 17th/morning of the 18th. None hatched yesterday, but 3 more hatched in net 2 last night. Now I have 7 in that net. There is just one more egg, that could have hatched since this morning. I think the 1 in net 1 is a premie. I got my new camera and I will try to upload pictures, but I still need to fiddle with it to get really good ones. The mysids should be waiting for me at my house.

There are some really full eggs in net 1, I expect some of them to hatch before the weekend. I am still suprised that only one has hatched and it has been a few days. So far the one in net 1 still stays golden-brown while all of the ones in net 2 are white. Both are able to change to the opposite color, however.

The final cuttle in net 2 hatched the night of the 20th/morning of the 21st. The oldest cuttle in that net is one week old tonight. Most of the cuttles seem interested in the Mysids, though I have only seen a few eat. Today all of them were visible when I got home from work at about 9. They were all still hiding under/near something, but I could count 8 without moving the rock or any macro. I usually peek at them once a night. When I do there are usually 2 or 3 in the middle of the net breeder with the rest sitting on the SE and S corner plastic frame. It is really funny, like the ones in the middle are putting on a show for the other guys. I suspect that the ones in the center are the oldest of the group. I am going to try to get a picture of it tomorrow night. It is pretty difficult to get them to move around during the day. Every once in a while I will see one walk along the rock or flash colors, but the only way I can get them to swim is by nudging them with my pipet (I swear I am not abusive :D). I hope they will become more day active as they age and realize that they will not be fed when the lights are off. Right now I can't really control when they eat; I just throw a bunch of mysids in there for them to hunt whenever they feel like it. I put new mysids in around 3 pm and 10 pm.

Net 1 had a second baby last night (Dec. 22 night/23 morn). The second one is also very small compared to any of the cuttles in net 2. I saw baby 1 try to catch a mysid earlier tonight; I don't think he got it though. There are at least 3 more eggs in net 1 that I can see a cuttle in. One of the cuttles I have seen move around and change colors in the egg. It was pretty neato :D. I haven't counted recently, but there should be 9 eggs total in that net (7 if you subtract the 2 that hatched). Both cuttles are extremely shy and as I said earlier, a good deal smaller than the cuttles in the other net. I will get a comparison shot tomorrow.

I tried to get a movie today of the cuttles eating; I sat there for almost 9 minutes (stood, rather) and I got some movement, but no action. I had a kink in my neck afterwords ^^.

Once they get more accustomed to eating, you should be able to see them go for the mysids once they are placed in the net. At that point its good to watch and ensure each cuttle gets one.

Typically from my experience, flood feeding (constantly having a lot of food in the net) can intimidate baby cuttle to eat. They seem more likely to strike at a single shrimp then when theres a hoard of them. Thier confidence will grow in time, where they will strike at anything even if its much larger then they are.

I have hardly ever seen them strike for the first two weeks. FWIW, I flood feed now to make sure the babies all get food because I am keeping the babies in a single group rather than separated. I used to think flood feeding was intimidating, but I now think the avoidance of food is just young cuttles being young.

Flood feeding will be my only choice for the next week and a half, but I would try feeding more sporadically if I could. I am going out of town and have a friend coming; but he can only come once a day so I am going to have him load the net with shrimp to that they can get their fill. Thanks for the advice though.

Edit:

Net 1 had a 3rd baby last night (22/23). I think it's finally time for that batch.

I have hardly ever seen them strike for the first two weeks. FWIW, I flood feed now to make sure the babies all get food because I am keeping the babies in a single group rather than separated. I used to think flood feeding was intimidating, but I now think the avoidance of food is just young cuttles being young.

My recent batch were taking mysids after 3-5 days.

Interesting observation about flood feeding. I do believe that size of the cuttle and size of the prey do play a part in this behavior. For example, I started my juveniles on shore shrimp earlier then normal at about 3.5-4weeks old. At this time they were already confident with the mysids and snatched them within seconds of throwing them in the tank. Once I started using shore shrimp, they were much less confident and I had to flood feed them again. That is, Id throw a bunch of shore shrimp in and they would not eat them right away. Over night or the course of the day, I would notice the shrimp numbers dwindle. Now, 2-3 weeks after the introduction of shore shrimp, they are equal in size and very confident with their eating ability. Shrimps twice their size disappear within seconds of entry into the tank.

With every batch of eggs, I always seem to have 1 or 2 'runts'. These guys always are much less confident eaters and develop much slower in regards to size. I often isolate these just because the other cuttles will often go for their 2nd shrimp before the runt even gets one. This is the only reason I dont suggest flood feeding. However, this is easily remedied by separating the runts so they have less competition.

On another note, my current batch are nearing 2 months and Ive recently got most of them to eat frozen shrimp! The trick seemed to be skipping a feeding so they are hungry and then placing the shrimp in a high flow area or dangle it with fishing wire. So far so good!

What kind of shrimp are you using?

I noticed a 4th baby in Net 1. I am not sure if he came out last night or today. If it was today, it would be my first cuttle birth during daytime. I also found a burst egg that was underdeveloped. I took out the remains of the embryo. If my initial count was correct, I should get 4 more babies in this net making my cuttle count 16. That means that right now I have 12 (wow, that seems like a lot). I am currently uploading pictures and should be posting them within the hour.

Cuttles in net 1 are quicker to change colors, smaller, and shyer so far. They seem to prefer to keep a mottled-brown appearance while the cuttles in net 2 stay white. The net 1 cuttles will occasionally keep white for a while. Similarly, the cuttles in net 2 will sometimes stay brown for a while, but this behavior was only observed while the cuttles were sleeping in the red macroalgae or hanging out by the rock. It could be the mini-sun above net 1, but the cuttles in that net also seem more iridescent.

What kind of lights are you running.

I have a NO 40w fluorescent light over the tank and I put a Rio Mini-Sun over net 1 to see if it made a difference in behavior.

Sorry about pictures. Will have them up tomorrow. Computer is acting up.

I hope to have a video or two up shortly. And some pictures. My laptop that all the pics are on is currently being rude, sorry for the extra delay.

5th baby in net 1 on Dec 23/24. There were a couple other full eggs in there when I left for vacation yesterday; the person I have taking care of my tank said there were only 5 today too. The cuttles in net 1 are about 1/4-3/8 inches. In net two they are 1/2-5/8 inches. I probably won't have any updates for a while, aside from any word I get of births, and when I am finally able to get pictures up. Today my oldest cuttle is 10 days :).

Here's a video at night. Toward the end I caught one of them eating a mysid.

http://cookiecaper.com/CuttlefishVideos/nine.avi

If this is uploadable to the gallery could someone put it in there for me (Monty or Tony)?

has to be Tony, I'm afraid.

http://cookiecaper.com/CuttlefishVideos/193.avi

http://cookiecaper.com/CuttlefishVideos/204.avi

Watch in the bottom right corner of the 2nd one and you will see the cuttle down there catch a mysid. Bottom support for the net breeder measures 3/8" for size reference.

I can't watch them... I don't know why... I even updated my mediaplayer

Install the k-lite codec pack from filehippo.com. Let me know if there are a lot of people that can't open the files I can change the format.

I got a codex missing error and went to MS to see if there was anything special about a .avi file. Turns out there are at least 3 different codex for .avi. I know I have the most popular one but it is not working with that flavor

You need a codec for mpeg4 .avi files. I will try to reformat them and get the new ones up later tonight or tomorrow. Newer systems should have the correct one already (Vista, if you are using windows). I know not a ton of people have Vista right now; I thought the XP would have it too, but it seems that it does not.

Another hatchling in net 1 last night (Dec 26/27). That makes 6 in net 1 for a total of 14.

Wow, it's been a while since an update...

Final cuttle count is 14 babies; Six in net one and Eight in net two. The oldest cuttle in net two will be one month old on the 16th, just four days away. All of the cuttles in net 2 are pretty confident eaters. I have seen a couple eat frozen mysis shrimp, which I would feed when I ran out of live mysids and was waiting for another batch. The cuttles in net 1 are actually better at eating frozen than those in net 2, despite them being younger and more shy than the others. I believe this to be because of the extra flow, which keeps the food suspended instead of laying on the bottom. I am going to start making the transition to shore shrimp in net two in about a week. I have been only feeding once a day, I will sometimes feed twice.

All of the cuttles are beginning to be more day-active. Those in net two have started to act interested when they see me watching them. They will sometimes change colors when they see me, but more often they will just swim over a look at me. I am beginning to see a larger variety in color changes and more complex patterns, though nothing too exciting yet. I have also noticed an excess of pods on net 1, which could be due to the extra light and extra algae growth. Net two seems pretty clean from any natural fauna. I think this is because the cuttles roam along the netting and suck up any food they find. I have seen several skimming along the sides of the net and a couple along the bottom.

Cuttle size is about 1/2"-5/8" in net 2, and 3/8"-1/2" in net 1. Mysids are becoming easy to eat but big pods are still a challenge.

Was anyone able to get the videos to work? I am going to upload them to photobucket soon so they will be easily viewable by everyone and I will have new pictures up soon.

Have you been feeding them once a day since they were born?

I can't get the videos to work either, but I am using an ibook, so that may be the problem...

right on,look forward too your next post.

Cuttlegirl- Yes. For the first week or so I flood fed and reloaded when all/most of the shrimp were gone. Then I went on vacation, and I had the person taking care of my tank flood feed once per day. I came home and found that they really only needed one feeding a day. Like I said there were a few days I fed twice but mostly just once.

I have been without a constant supply of live mysids for almost a week. Last Wednesday I ordered some and they arrived dead except for probably about 30-50. I had some shipped out on Monday to replace them and now it seems like either the post office has messed up or the vendor slipped on my address. Either way, I am without mysids.

I was able to catch enough Mysids (as well as some nice-sized pods) from work yesterday to feed them for the day. Today I was not able to do so, as the populations in our tanks is dwindling. I got a few, but just enough to keep them from an empty stomach. I fear they will result to cannibalism if they don't get a good supply of live feed for a couple of days, which I guess would be better than them just dieing off. I am able to trick some of them to eat frozen mysis by moving it around. I think I am going to pick up either H2O's mini-mysis and/or PE's Frozen Mysis Shrimp tomorrow if I am not able to find live feed for them. Right now I am using Sally's, which has little nutrition and the shrimp are too large for some of the cuttles.

I had the best luck feeding mysids if the eyes were still on the shrimp. You could take off the tail of the mysids to make them a more manageable size for your cuttles.

I think Thales drew eyes on some of his, but I don't know what he used for a marker.

do your local fish stores have ghost shrimps or even small fish? They can be used as substitutes during emergency situations. How large are the cuttles? If you buy shore shrimp, there will probably be some in the bag that are small still. You would also be suprised how large a prey they will go for when they are hungry.

1 mysid a day is not enough in my opinion. With mysids and 2-4 weeks old bandensis, I would be able to feed up to 4-6 a day if i gave them that many. They are probably more active during the day now because they are hungry. If they are satiated, they wont move as much. For frozen food, the eyes may be important for them to recognize them as food. Typically, I will use a small stick to keep moving the frozen shrimp around until they grab it. It helps to keep the backs of the shrimps towards the head of the cuttle for this is where they want to grab it.

I also like to feed them a lot in the beginning. They will grow drastically faster and become capable of eating larger and frozen shrimps earlier. Saves money in the long run. Ive had bandensis reach sizes after 3-4 months that earlier batches couldn't reach until 6+ months because I have increased feeding. They look and seem healthier for it as well.

If a situation like this happens again, I will buy some guppies for them to eat. I was also going to try Ghost Shrimp, but we were out at work. The post office finally found my package today, and to my surprise all of the mysids are alive. Some cuttles are 3/4 of an inch, but the smallest are about 1/2 inch. How would you feed mysids with a stick? I would think that they would not be big enough to poke it through. Sorry it is taking so long to have the pictures up, I promise to have some up tomorrow, because I have both work and school off.

When I feed I put in 2-3 mysids per cuttle. I only feed once per day, however. I am starting to see more drastic color changes and patterns now that they are getting older. next time I am going to order some Shore Shrimp to see if they can handle them.

I dont skewer the shirmps I use the stick to poke at the dead shrimp to cause it to move. The movement will then attract the attention of the cuttles.

Im curently feeding mine grass shrimp. Purchased from local bait shops live for about 18 dollars a half pound. This is a lot of shrimp. They are 2-3.5 inches long on average and much larger then my cuttles, but they are being eaten alive or dead. If they cant finish them, they will leave the heads of the shrimp. You will see this once you start getting shore shrimp.

Another thing I did was to pick out the dead mysids or shore shrimps and freeze them. The cuttles seemed to eat these more redily then any store purchased frozen shrimp. I used these as food for possible emergencies when live was not available..

I noticed with the batch that I received dead, that the ate them more readily than the frozen as well. Maybe it's a scent?

Shipposhack,
I would nix the guppy idea unless you can be sure they are not treated with copper. I recently discovered that most large pet stores routinely treat with copper as a preventative ...

That's true, and if the shop doesn't the importer will certainly give all fish a prophylactic treatment. I worked in an importer's place for over a year and every tank got dosed, almost daily, unless it was an invert, ray or other sensitive animal.

That's true, and if the shop doesn't the importer will certainly give all fish a prophylactic treatment. I worked in an importer's place for over a year and every tank got dosed, almost daily, unless it was an invert, ray or other sensitive animal.

This probably explains why I lost an officinalis a while back. During some major storm season I wa unable to get live foods for a week. I had to resort to small feeders from the LFS. The cuttle got weaker and died within 2 weeks. I always suspected this was related to the feeders, but was never certain

All of our tanks except the invert systems are treated with copper. I wasn't even thinking to be careful about that. Thanks for the advice.

One of the babies died last night. I am certain his death was due to lack of food for so long. There is another that is weak but I made sure that he got 2 mysids today. I am going to feed two times a day for a few days so that they can get their strength back up. The one that died was one of the smaller ones that wouldn't eat frozen.

Here are some pictures finally like I promised :smile:.

The first is from 1/04 and the rest are from the 13th or 14th.

More coming...

Lol sorry it took so long I've been staring at the chalice thread on RC while they upload. I still have more...

WOW,I must of been lucky I was feeding my octo mollys for the first few days.Before I started going to the bay and getting small blue claw crabs.

BTW nice cuttles.

The 3rd pic is one of my favs. He was wrestling to keep that pod in!

did he get it?

Thanks tread head. Yeah he got it :).

These are the last shots for now. I hope it was worth the wait. I will see if I can get those videos up on photobucket too.

I have tried using sailfin Mollies from Paul Sachs since I know he does not treat with copper (I confirmed this before ordering) and he had already acclimated them to full salt. They reproduce at least as well as guppies (they eat their young so you have to separate the fry quickly) but I could not get my first brood of Mercatoris babies interested and gave away the adults.

Yay! Video!

Here are the videos from a while back:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v292/spydog143/th_CuttleVid1.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v292/spydog143/?action=view&current=CuttleVid1.flv)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v292/spydog143/th_Cuttlevid2.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v292/spydog143/?action=view&current=Cuttlevid2.flv)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v292/spydog143/th_Cuttlevid3.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v292/spydog143/?action=view&current=Cuttlevid3.flv)

For the most part I was trying to get them catching the shrimp, which I did a little bit. If I were to take a video now it would probably be much more eventful.

Edit: Sorry for the horrible quality, I didn't think that photobucket would do that, I am looking for somewhere else to host the videos right now.

cool,I wish I had the time, money, and room to do both octos and cuttles.

I acually only have cuttles right now. In the future I want to get a big tank to raise a group of larger cuttles. I am thinking of a 210, but I don't have anywhere to put it right now. Then this tank would be open for octopus again.

Until then I will just keep stuffing my 12 gallon with way more coral than should be in it :). And modding everything so that it has all the features of that a big tank should have and everything that the typical nano keeper wants to stay away from :D.

We just got a 140 gallon set up and I tried to talk my girlfriend into a group of cuttles (or a vulgaris!) but it looks like she's set on another seahorse/pipefish tank. It's used and we found some scary stuff in it (like a rusty razor blade) so I don't know if it would be ceph safe in the first place so I'm not pushing too hard.

I fed frozen mysis again this morning to see how many would eat it. Every cuttle in net 2 ate at least one of the frozen shrimp, and some in net 1 also ate it. I'm getting shore shrimp this week for the bigger guys. I ordered some more mysids for the smaller ones. I hope this is the last time I have to order the mysids.

Not much has changed as far as behavior.

Two deaths today. I don't understand why; all the cuttles have been looking really good. Both that died were smaller so maybe it was a food dominance issue. Cuttles are nearing 1 inch. All are still eating frozen but I give them live too.

sorry to hear it :sad: RIP

Thanks Monty.

Head count tonight comes to 10. I thought I had 11; I will have to track down what happened to the other guy. There are 4 in net 1 (with 1 runt), and 6 in net 2. I switched from H2O's mini mysis to PE Mysis Shrimp a couple of days ago and the cuttles are extremely responsive to the change. They go after the PE much faster than they did the H2O, and don't even need coaxing. This is a good thing since there is about 10x the protein in the PE food.

I am currently uploading a video of them eating tonight that is quite amusing. Photobucket is taking forever though and I will send it to Tony to be put into the gallery as well. I will update with the video when it is up. And this time it won't be crappy quality :D.

Today my oldest cuttle is 3 months old! He is about 1.5-2 inches and male. He is by far the biggest of the bunch. All the other ones are around 1 inch.

I had a couple of people come over on Thursday to check out my cuttlefish. They were very amused by them. They bought one of them from net 2 so now I have 9 cuttles total- 4 in net 1 and 5 in net 2. I will be selling 4 or 5 of them toward the end of this month. Net one has my only runt. He is about half the size as all the other ones but he is my best eater. I tried to feed frozen krill to them and the little guy was the first one to accept it. Only a couple others ate some of the krill, but most of it was wasted even with the ones that ate. Everyone is eating live shore shrimp right now, including the runt. I have to give him the smallest ones I can but I hope I have enough small ones to keep him on those until he is big enough for regular sized ones. It is much easier to throw in the shore shrimp than it is to thaw out the mysis.

The color changes have become much more complex. Resting colors are either white or brown, but when they are hunting or swimming around they flash a lot of different colors and patterns. I am finally able to see the skirts and their iridophores fairly easily. The iridophores came out nicely in most of the pictures as well.

Last week I started seeing males showing their aggression. So far I have gotten 2 cuttles in net 2 to show they are males by bothering them with the pipet. I caught one cuttle in net 1 showing off his stuff tonight. I suspect there to be at least one more male in net 1, but there may only be 2 in net 2.

The cuttles in net 1 (High light, high flow) seem to be more shy, skittish, and smaller than those in net 2. Whenever I put my pipet in net 1 to move around the cuttles I always make one ink almost right away. If I bug the cuttles in net 2 they almost never ink, and they just maneuver around the pipet and flash colors. I think that Low light, low flow make the cuttles more comfortable that high light, high flow. However, the higher flow did make the cuttles in net 1 accept frozen foods more readily than those in net 2.

Here are some pictures from today. A lot of them are of the same cuttle that continually failed at catching a shrimp. He finally got it though.

.

..

Sorry I've been so lax on the updates. I am really busy but with summer coming I may have a little more time to do stuff. I have a bunch of pictures I need to upload and post here so hopefully I will be able to get some of them up.

I still have 5 cuttles left. The runt I let out a couple of weeks ago but she is still 25-50% smaller than the rest of them. I have 3 males and 1 female aside from the runt, who I believe is female but I am not positive yet. I have seen some bad competition between the males and hope that as the runt matures more the fighting will subside some. My cuttles mate regularly and I have been patiently awaiting eggs, which I finally spotted this afternoon. They are in a hole between 4 rocks (aquascaped as a possible octopus den), and are difficult to see. I believe there are at least 2 clutches down there but they are not very developed. I will wait a little bit longer and then move the rocks and take a better look at the eggs. My cuttles are 5.5 months old right now, and this is the first set of eggs they have laid. Paradox was able to get eggs much faster than I and I believe it is because I feed smaller portions than he does.

Up until this week, I have been solely feeding frozen shore shrimp, no larger than 1 inch in length. I would allot 2-3 per cuttle. This week I bought some silversides and the cuttles love them. They are much easier to feed than the shore shrimp as well. I am going to try to get some larger shrimp to feed them along with the silversides.

On Friday markings appeared on all of my cuttles that allows me to easily distinguish them from each other. Before this it was possible, but difficult to do. There is one dominant male, who has dark markings all over when he is showing off. Another male has a lot more white on him than the dominant when he is displaying, and I suspect him to be the male from the other clutch, however I am not certain. The third male is smaller than the others and I have seen him display the tactic of pretending to be a female in order to keep the other males from picking on him. The 4th cuttle is female, and the 5th is the runt. Before Friday, this was the way I had to tell them apart; there was no way to be sure until they displayed, aside from the runt. On Friday face-burn was found on 2 of my cuttles - the female and the small male. The male with more white has a bite mark on his skirt from the dominant male, and the dominant male has no blemishes. I may consider naming or numbering them so they are easier to talk about.

If all goes well I should have some eggs and babies available before July. I am going to see if the fish store I work at wants to take some for display and I am also going to contact the public aquarium here (The Living Planet) once I get a good population of cuttles to see if they want any.

Hey,
wow! you have 5 cuttles! Thats a LOT of mouths to feed :D in your previous post when they were 3 months they look SO similar to my two its unbelievable. I think mine are going to be two months soon though, not 3 months. Anyway good luck with your breeding and keep us updated. Post pictures!

Interesting you found face burn on your guys. Im still not confident thatt his comes from rubbing. Do you have measurements of Nitrates or even phosphates for the tank? Actually, Id be interested in any tank parameters that you have tools to measure.

I would definitely check nitrates though for they can get high in ceph tanks and I do feel this has an affect on breeding.

Bite marks are inevitable. My males all have them. Once they start laying eggs, expect the males to become even more territorial and aggressive.

My cuttles always decide to lay eggs in a cave in my system as well. Rich has told me that he keeps a piece of eggcrate in his system and his cuttles always lay eggs on it. It seems that once they choose a spot, they like to keep with this spot for Ive added a clay pot and a piece of egg crate without success. Regardless of how many times I remove thier eggs from the cave, they will keep laying new ones there. The cave is the darkest place in the tank. I feel they chose this spot for protective reasons.

shipposhack, the two i got from you are doing great, i just found eggs today (they have been breeding for quite a while). there are about 40. i will post a pic tomorrow evening when i can get to it.

correction, on closer count it appears to be 60+ eggs.....

I actually haven't tested my tank since I put the eggs in. I have also done very few water changes since getting them (the last one was February, but I was planning to do one soon). It wouldn't surprise me if the Nitrate or Phosphate was a little bit high since I have been feeding dead food for a while now. I will test the tank tomorrow at work. I believe the first couple of clutches were infertile, though I still haven't taken a really good look at them. I found another clutch under a different rock yesterday, but in the same area. This spot is much easier to see though, and can be seen from the front of the tank without moving any rockwork.

Hobogato, it's good to know that yours are breeding and laying eggs. I hope you get some fertile ones soon.

here is a quick pic - not so good because only the actinic lights were on

http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c329/hobogato/clamsncuttles/DSC02175.jpg

I tested my water yesterday.

Ammonia - 0
Nitrite - .1
Nitrate - 5
pH - 7.9
Phosphate - 2.5
Calcium - 500
dKH - 8.3

I am going to be doing a 5 gallon water change soon and will probably add some carbon and phosguard to the filter. The first two clutches are definitely infertile. I don't know yet about the 3rd one.

Your PH is a little low. Try to get it to around 8.3-8.4

Ive noticed with my eggs that they often deflate and then later inflate. So in some situations I though I had bad eggs to alter find out they were good.

The pH is the result of using Oceanic salt, which I switched to Instant Ocean a long time ago. Since I haven't changed much water though, the Oceanic salt is still demanding its 7.9 pH.

With school starting next week and me only having 1 cuttlefish left and a massive aiptasia problem, I have decided that once this cuttle dies I am not going to get any more for a while. Looking back at the pictures makes me miss the babies but I do not have the time to try and breed them again. I am probably going to get some peppermint shrimp and possibly a butterfly to get rid of the aiptasia and just leave the tank alone for a while. Hopefully I will be ready to start breeding again after the holidays.

My board activity has been fairly nonexistant this whole summer; I think I just need a little break and then I will be ready to go again. I am going to try to keep watching the board for interesting news and updates, though my activity level will likely stay about the same.

The peppermint shrimp are all you need to get rid of aiptasia - I had a problem for a while, and now I have absolutely none!

This is the only animal cure for a problem that has ever worked for me!

Nancy