Intro:
My fascination with cephalopods started about two years ago after I found a few online articles about keeping cephalopods. Soon after, I discovered TONMO.com and started researching cephalopods. I got my first cephalopod, an octopus, about a year and a half ago. He was already very large and I assume he was near the end of his life cycle so he was only with me for about a week. Then, a few months ago I got another octopus. This time he was very small, with his mantle being about the size of a grape and a leg span of only 3-4". Unfortunatly, during a tank switch, he crawled out of his tank and I found him struggling on the floor. It took me a minute or two to finally get him up [slippery little things], and get him in the tank. The next day I found him dead, I assume from the stressful event the previous day. So, after that I gave up on cephalopods, thinking that they must be above my capabilities. Then, months later I found Paradox's 150g. cuttle reef. (http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1245638&perpage=25&pagenumber=1) I dismissed the idea untill I read the whole thread and found that he had eggs and babies currently available! I thought, "Well, I do have a tank that is currently cycling, so its the perfect timing, right?" So, after a talk with my parents and a few emails I am currently on my way to getting dwarf cuttlefish (Sepia Bandensis)!

The Tank:
The tank is a 30g. oceanic cube which is currently still cycling. I want this to double as a reef [and a good one too] so I tried to stick with a setup that is semi-nice for the coral but not overboard for the cuttlefish. My goal is to try and keep the water clean enough for some easier SPS such as some montipora and keep the tank pretty much algea free. For filtration I will have the 10g. sump which will have a refugium section and I will also have a Euro-Reef RS80 which should help a lot with filtration. Then, for additional algea control, I will have a phosban reactor with GFO (Grannular Ferric Oxide) in it. I am also currently looking into a sulfur denitrator to help with nitrates.The return pump is still undecided, but it will be around 300gph and there will be an inline chiller (1/10HP). Flow is still undecided but I dont want something too strong because of the cuttlefish. As for lighting, I am using my old Aqualight which has a 150w MH and 130w of PC.


Feeding:
The ones I am getting are going to be about 3 weeks old and approx 3/4". For the first month they will be on a diet of live amphipods and mysid shrimp. They will each get about 4 amphipods/mysids per day and hopefully I will start to wean them onto frozen mysids during this time. Then after that, once they reach about 1" and are around 1.5 months old I will introduce them to small shore shrimp and Sargassum Shrimp. (http://sitefly.com/users/21496/pictures/sargassm_shrimp.jpg) Most of my food will be ordered from www.aquaculturestore.com (http://www.aquaculturestore.com) and some of it, the sargassum shrimp, will be caught locally.
The Nursery:
Since they are so small and because their future home is still cycling, I have set them up a nursery that will be their home for the first month and a half. This tank consists of a 10g. tank with an Aquaclear 20 with some filter floss that was previously in my 90g. It has a few peices of LR rubble on the bottom and some cheato for filtration. It has an old sunpod 70w MH and a titanium heater. However, they will not be in contact with any of that becuase they will be isolated inside of a small breeder net to monitor their eating and to keep them away from filters, predators, and burning themselves on the heater. :P
The rest of the tank I plan to use as the feeding tank, where I will store all the live food for them to eat.
Here are some pictures of the nursery and my mysids that just came in today! Me and Thales are planning for the cuttles to arrive this wednesday so pics of them on wed.

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a100/Fishfreak218/cuttletank0002.jpg

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a100/Fishfreak218/cuttletank0001.jpg

http://i30.tinypic.com/2lc2og1.jpg

cool! good luck!

Hey,
I have a few questions on my filtration and flow...
First off, I was thinking maybe I should use my old Coralife Super Skimmer 65 and then in addition get one of these (which a local member highly reccomends, used with good results) http://www.aquaripure.com/index.htm ...it is somewhat like a sulfur denitrator but works a little differently. This way I have a weaker skimmer to get any ink etc. and then my nitrates will be taken care of by the denitrator and my phosphates will be taken care of by the phosphate reactor. ( I would also get rid of the refugium with this set up as well). What is your opinions on this?
Next question is, does anyone have a suggestion for powerheads with the cuttlefish. Im worried about them getting a) sucked to the intake of the powerhead or b) getting their arms inside and getting torn up on the propellers.
I was thinking maybe a Hydor Koralia 3 or maybe 2 Korlia 2's?
opinions? What do you use with your cuttlefish?

I can't speak for the cuttles but Octane does very well with the Koralia 3 and I am planning on either two 3's or two 4's (I bought the 4's but they may be too strong and will switch them with with others I have if I have too much current). I did have a small problem with the 3 in my one tanks containing a Condy anemone but found that covering it loosely with live rock solved the problem. Love these things!

THEY'RE HERE!!!!
I'll posts pics a little bit later. They are a lot bigger then I thought they would be. They wont be on mysid for much longer :) (Yay! no cannibalistic food!!!) Thanks Thales for dealing with the copious amounts of emails that I sent and for very nice, large cuttles!
They were right on time, but the bag was punctured. Luckily, there was still enough water in the bag for them. I am currently drip acclimating them and they are starting to get a little more active!
Thanks again Thales!

:welcome: :cuttlehi:

The Cuttlefish:
They arrived today at around 10 o'clock, and I drip acclimated them for 2.5 hours. When I opened the box the bag was punctured but luckily most of the water was still in the bag! They are a lot larger then I expected and I will need to order some grass shrimp in the next day or so. They are about the size of a large grape so about 1". I think they are ready to move from mysis too shore shrimp, so I ordered 50 shore shrimp today. Anyway here are the pictures:
When I opened the package:
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a100/Fishfreak218/1monthold0002.jpg

Acclimating:
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a100/Fishfreak218/1monthold0003.jpg

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a100/Fishfreak218/1monthold0004.jpg

Color Change:
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a100/Fishfreak218/1monthold0005.jpg

Size Comparison of the two:
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a100/Fishfreak218/1monthold0006.jpg

In the net breeder:
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a100/Fishfreak218/1monthold0007.jpg

Hope you guys enjoy!

:cuttlehi: Welcome little guys!

:cuttlehi::cuttlego:

They have been black ever since I put them in their net breeder, I really hope that they arent too stressed out.

Cool pictures, :welcome: little ones.

Looking good!

I havent had a chance to go through everythin in your post in detail, but saw you were thinking of using a lesser skimmer because you want to rely more on the phosban reator and a denitrator.

In my opinion, the skimmer should be the main filtration and the reactor and denitrator are supliments to a skimmer. A good skimmer should remove the waste before it converts to phosphates or nitrates. I would add a good skimmer and wait till later to see how the tank matures. Down the line if you start seeing nitrates creep up and youve looked at all possible reasons and still cant control it, I would look into denitrating options. Phosban reactors are cheap and very efficient. If you are going for a reef as well and have this installed from the get go, you may see that your corals will be faded. Your water will be too clean. There needs to be a balance with the correct amount of nutrients in the system to get good colors. Too much you'll have problems. Too little you will have problems. Because of the low nutrients of a new system, I didnt add my phosban reactor until 6 months in. The same goes with carbon.

Im sure with the cuttles, a low nutrient tank is fine, but with corals, you will need to ease into it and find the balance for your system.

thanks for the incite paradox!
I just figured that the cuttlefish would be a pretty high bioload on the little 35g-40g system. On my 90g. reef tank I have a Euro Reef and I love it so maybe it is smart to just go with a strong skimmer and a phosphate reactor and hold off on the denitrator. I figure the cuttlefish will have a large bioload so I doubt my corals will become that pastel/pasty/faded look, especially if I dont have the denitrator.

Update:
The cuttlefish both ate a ghost shrimp today that was roughly the same size as them. For now they are getting about 10+ mysids a day and gut loaded ghost shrimp until my shore shrimp come in from aquaculturestore.com

here are some new pictures and a video of them eating! Pictures are hard to get because of the blue lighting and the net breeder, all of the frontal shots are actually taken through the net which makes the pictures faded but oh well. Enjoy!
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a100/Fishfreak218/1monthold0005_1.jpg

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a100/Fishfreak218/1monthold0004_1.jpg

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a100/Fishfreak218/1monthold0002_1.jpg

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a100/Fishfreak218/1monthold0001_1.jpg

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a100/Fishfreak218/th_CuttlefishTank009.jpg (http://s9.photobucket.com/albums/a100/Fishfreak218/?action=view&current=CuttlefishTank009.flv)

Update:
Well today was a big day at the cuttlefish reef :). The cuttlefish have been named by my friends; the big one is Walker and the small one is Texas Ranger. Texas Ranger seems to be the more social one who isn't really afraid of the camera or me. He tends to stay up towards the front while Walker (who happens to walk a lot :D) stays toward the back. Anyway, I decided that today I was going to do a water change. While I was doing a water change I noticed that I only had about 25 SW ghost shrimp left :o. Since Walker has grown so much in the past few weeks of having him I decided that I would collect all of the ghost shrimp out of the tank. Once I caught them all I released Walker and Texas Ranger into the ten gallon and then put the shrimp into the net breeder. Of course, it was a very stressful event and whilst doing this whole thing I managed to suck out every single bristle worm! I hate those things with a passion. I also managed to get some pictures edited and uploaded, so here they are:
Texas Ranger:
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a100/Fishfreak218/1monthold0001_2.jpg

Texas Ranger eating a ghost shrimp:
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a100/Fishfreak218/1monthold0001_3.jpg

Texas Ranger:
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a100/Fishfreak218/1monthold0003_3.jpg

Walker [pissed off at me, and eating simultaneously]
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a100/Fishfreak218/1monthold0017.jpg

Walker stalking a ghost shrimp:
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a100/Fishfreak218/1monthold0014.jpg

Hope you guys enjoyed!
P.S. they have eaten frozen mysis, a dead crab, and dead ghost shrimp so I'm hoping they will take to frozen well.

They ate frozen krill today!
This is such a relief because I had just ran out of shore shrimp and was only feeding them ghost shrimp for the past week.
Now I have another (cheaper) source of saltwater food!

They are becoming quite friendly now...
They have come to realize that I'm the one who brings the food and they have eaten out of my hands 3 times! I hope to get a video and some pictures of this soon. They are eating the frozen krill really well, which I am surprised at. They have started showing a lot of begging behavior also. I notice that they don't hang out together a lot. I usually see them on opposite sides of the tank or in different depths (one at top, one at bottom). I haven't seen any aggression yet which is good. I think they are about 2.5 months old now... the larger one is a good 2 inches and the smaller one about 1.5"
Is this the right growth rate? I think its almost time that they can go into the display tank (granted I turn down the flow and test the parameters)
We will see!

Growth rate sounds about right for well fed cuttles. When we weree still experimenting with appropriate food and diets, my cuttles would be 6 months old and only 2-2.5"s. Since weve found more appropriate foods, they get fat fast!

Congrats with the krill. For some reason, not all bandensis seem to go for them no matter how hard you try.

Growth rate sounds about right for well fed cuttles. When we weree still experimenting with appropriate food and diets, my cuttles would be 6 months old and only 2-2.5"s. Since weve found more appropriate foods, they get fat fast!

Congrats with the krill. For some reason, not all bandensis seem to go for them no matter how hard you try.

I remember reading that from you somewhere which made me a little nervous because thats really the frozen invert that is most accessible to me. The next best thing would be silversides which is fish and I know cuttlefish mainly dine on inverts so I was a bit nervous. They are starting to look at everything I place in the tank as food. I dropped a snail in there to help clean up and they struck at him (only to be very dissatisfied). Hopefully I can get them to eat a variety of frozen foods now that they think everything I drop into the tank is food.

Silversides are fine. I feed them that 3x a week.

Marine fish should be fine, gold fish not so good :smile:

J

nice pictures

Oh, I was under the impression that marine inverts should be the staple diet and not marine fish.
Anyway,
here are some updated pictures... they moved into the display tank!!!
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a100/Fishfreak218/cuttlezzzz0001.jpg

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a100/Fishfreak218/cuttlezzzz0004.jpg

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a100/Fishfreak218/cuttlezzzz0005.jpg

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a100/Fishfreak218/cuttlezzzz0006.jpg

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a100/Fishfreak218/cuttlezzzz0007.jpg

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a100/Fishfreak218/cuttlezzzz0008.jpg

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a100/Fishfreak218/cuttlezzzz0009.jpg

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a100/Fishfreak218/cuttlezzzz3320001.jpg

I absolutely love those orange, "knobby" star fish for ceph tanks. They are like having a bright piece of coral that cleans the bathrooms (or for the guys, better than a French maid :sly:). Do you happen to know the proper name for them as I frequently recommend them but only know the common name.

You know, I did a search and couldn't find it, I just pray it isn't a coral eater since this tank will hold most of my "designer corals" (the small amount that I have :lol: )

Fishfreak,
uhh, you may want to remove it! They do tend to eat corals. When I make my recommendation, I always warn this ESPECIALLY if you have a giant clam. It does not mess with my gorgonians and left the Kenya pretty much alone (however, pencil urchins will eat Kenya and other softies if they don't have enough to eat). They are great for most of what you keep in an octo tank but NOT what you CAN keep with cuttles.

Do you happen to know the proper name for them as I frequently recommend them but only know the common name.

Is it Echinaster echinophorus? FWIW, Wetwebmedia faq says it has poor survival rate in captivity and dines on sponges...
http://www.wetwebmedia.com/starcompfaqs.htm

I will differ completely with that diagnosis (the picture and description look correct) and would suggest that it is hearsay rather than experience. I still have my original 3 and they thrive in the octo tanks. There is NO question that they are meat eaters (there is a picture in Octane's thread where the two in his tank went after the shrimp in a ball that 'Tane ignored) and my warning about giant clams is from experience (I've had the first one for over a year - prior to Octane inhabiting this tank - the other two were acquired because the first did so well).

Greg, the one thing I found after your post with the proper name, does say "low light" and makes me wonder if that makes them doubly suitable for an octo tank as mine are visible all the time. I had tried the "recommended" stars several times, only to have them dissolve so I stayed with serpents only for several years. When Ken sent me a freebie, common star and it survived, I reconsidered trying Caribbean starfish. I saw the Knobby during my visit with Ken after the last TONMOCON and had him send me one, then two more :grin: but he also feels that they are not particulary safe around corals.

what kinds of urchins do well in an ceph tank?

by the way are the babies S. Bandesis. i think i spelled that wrong but you get the idea.

well thats just my luck, haha.
I'll wait until the starfish is gone before I add any of my corals.

BTW yes keith they are S. Bandensis

Oh, I was under the impression that marine inverts should be the staple diet and not marine fish.


Most cephs seem to prefer marine inverts, but many will eat fish, my point is...if you are offering your ceph a fish it shouldn't be a goldfish! but something marine. Whether or not the ceph will eat it is an entirely different matter :grin: and totally out of your control :lol:

j

I'll try the silversides one day.
Anyway, I'm leaving on vacation for 9 days and I am really starting to get worried becuase last time I flood fed (and only left for like 2 days) but this time someone needs to hand feed them. I pray that everything goes well. Wish me luck!

Well,
I'm on vacation right now and I was hesitant about leaving the cuttlefish for such a long period of time but so far so good. They are now eating freeze dried krill (as long as it is soaked in a cup of tank water) but they do prefer the frozen. I never expected them to eat so well and I am hoping to see some good growth from them as I start to add variety to their diet.
Has anyone else had luck with freeze dried foods and cephalapods?
I also bought some of those Jurassic Triops that I used to have has a kid (or at least a younger kid) and I'm going to try them when I get home from vacation. Our vacation has been extended but I'm not too worried about it since the pet sitter said that everything was going good.
Pics when I get home!

Triops are freshwater, right?

that is correct, but i figured i'd try them just for fun and for the cuttles to hunt since they have been getting only prepared foods and no live food

Well, It is 1:42 and I just got home from my trip and I just got a text message saying that the pump had turned off and it was sent 3 DAYS AGO!!!!!! Sooo I dont know how this happened but the cuttlefish tank has been off for 3 days and nothing died...
Im stumped.
Good luck i guess!

RIP Texas Ranger :(
Im about ready to give up and get rid of some of my tanks. I've had it.

sorry. RIP TR

:cry: but you still have walker so don't just give up.