Well, having read all the articles, and any other information I could find I finally decided to purchases some cuttles. I have ordered some eggs from a company and they shuld arrive on thursday or Friday. I would like any type of advice from some of you guys with experience with them. The "brood" tank that I am placing them in is a 29 gallon with a bak pak and a bio wheel with the wheel removed and just carbon and purigen in it. It has a couple small rocks and a 1 inch sand bed. I also plan to put some chaeto from my reef tank in there as it seems to always contain tons of pods, etc. I figured it might also give the little guys a place to hide as well until they get to know us.

The cuddles I ordered are sepia bandensis. After speaking to the shop owner he has had a great deal of sucess shipping them and said the hatch rate is almost 100%. I have 3 other tanks that are up and running that should be sources of pods, but I plan to get some enriched brine as well. I jut don't think my reef tank would be a suitable home due to the fish and some rather nasty corals (hammer, frogspawn, etc). I will probably end up buying a 5th tank (125 or 120 maybe) to house the as they get older and need to be seperated.

So now I am open for your comments and suggestions. I hope to raise the little guy and possibly (with a little luck) breed them.

Thanks in advance

-Mike

PS please pardon my spelling errors, my keyboard tends to have keys that do not function right sometimes, lol.

i would reccomend keeping them in net breeders for the first few weeks, so that you can keep track of them, and make sure they are fed.

Good idea! I also have to get some prefilters for the skimmer and the bio wheel.

Oh, and watch out for cannibalism...

Check out this link (page 2, #19)
http://www.tonmo.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5970

Congrats!
Yes, definetly use a breeder net for the first couple months and do watch out for cannablism. Keep them well fed and not to crowded and cover all intakes on any pumps.

Guess after reading the canibalism thread I will grab 2 et breaders or one of the guppy breeding pens. My wife and I watched some of the videos of the babbies posted on the stickycricket.com site last night. Pretty amazing stuff. Funny watchng them go after food in the large group, lol. Looks like there were a couple scuffles over the food too.

Has anyone seen the site livebrineshrimp.com? I placed an order tonight for 100 of their marine shrimp. Palaemonetes vulgaris or grass shrimp. They look to be a possible food source for the new cuttles! I am going to attempt to breed them if I can, but we will see. I was able to breed ghost shrimp once before with some sucess.

Well hopefully they are on their way...having some issues with shipping the eggs. They went to the local fed-ex and were told that they do not do next day air to my location. I called fed-ex and they said that there was no reason in the world that I could not recieve next day air or even the next day air express! So hopefully they will get shipped out today!

who at the lfs is shipping the eggs ornel?

He tried yeterday, lol. Not sure who shipped them out today, but they are on their way.

Egg are here and 4 hatched in transit! Now to find a steady supply of baby food. I did not realize how TINY these guys were from the pictures and videos. I have pods in there for now, but my reef tank will be drained of pods in no time. Time to start making some phone calls.

Congratulation on the new arrivals :baby: :baby: :baby: :baby: Hope they don't keep you up at night with late night feedings. :grin: How many eggs did you get?

I got 10 eggs on the assumption that some may not hatch. I am debating on turning my 180 into a cuttle tank. Right now it houes a young brown banded bamboo shark an mid sized eel and a small grouper. I would have to get rid of the grouper as he is very aggressive. How do you think the shark and eel would do? The shark is pretty laid back as is the eel. The eel never went after any of my smaller fish and the shark only seems interested in shrimp. The grouper would be a problem. He would have to go for sure as he is aggresive and will hit at other fish.

I got 10 eggs on the assumption that some may not hatch. I am debating on turning my 180 into a cuttle tank. Right now it houes a young brown banded bamboo shark an mid sized eel and a small grouper. I would have to get rid of the grouper as he is very aggressive. How do you think the shark and eel would do? The shark is pretty laid back as is the eel. The eel never went after any of my smaller fish and the shark only seems interested in shrimp. The grouper would be a problem. He would have to go for sure as he is aggresive and will hit at other fish.

I had a friend who had a small shark and an octopus together, and the shark ate the octopus... don't know the species of either, but sounds like a bad idea...

Hm something to consider I guess. I hate to get rid of the shark though. Ya think the eel would be out as well? Neither of them ever bothered a damsel that I had in the tank.

Eel and shark would have to go... It always ends badly when you mix cephs with other things.

Eel and shark would have to go... It always ends badly when you mix cephs with other things.


even if the eel and shark are harmless it could still stress/scare you cuttles and cuase them to ink

I order from livebrineshrimp.com every 2 weeks. So far its the cheapest I can find and Ive had no problems with them yet.

Congrats on the babies. They do seem really small at first, but they will grow fast.

To save you money, you can feed them pods for a few months although they would eat those shrimps even as newborns. Feeding newborns marine shrimps will drastically increase the growth rate..

Any body know where i can find any eggs or young cuttles for sale, any help would greatly apprecited.

I bought mine from a place called aquatropics in gainesville, fl

Well down to 3 alive and a couple eggs yet to hatch. I was up to 7, had some cannibalism in the breeder net, down to 5. Then 2 died of unknown reasons. Not sure what happened. The 3 remaining seem to be doing well. I add more pods every day. Some live, some escape and some get eaten. I finally saw one of them munch a pod today. i really think the primary problem was that they arrived very cold from shipping. The seller did not add any heat packs and we had some really cold weather. Hoping the remaining 3 will make it ok. At least they are eating even if it is each other :( I have some mysid coming in the morning. I hope I have cuttles left to eat it! The three remaining do seem to have grown though, so that at least gives me some hope. i am in between seperating out the remaining 3 or just leaving them together.

Oh as a side note, they have not even touched the small grass shrimp that I placed in the net with them. They seem freaked out by them more than anything. I placed several in with them yesterday and they got really freaked out and tried to escape the net and kept banging around the net so I removed the shrimp. One got so freaked out when one of the shrimp came near him that he inked and jetted away.

I would separate them just to be safe. Keep feeding them pods, they are too small for the shrimp yet. They will eat them soon, though! Good luck.

I guess I will get another net breeder. The guppy breeder container seemed kinda dangerous. The cuttles I put in there when I seperated them out could ALMOST get through the grating. And of course any pods I put in there that did not settle in to the chaeto went through the cracks.

yea i had the same canibilistic proublem with mine, i am also wondering if i could just release them into the tank? i know with my last cuttle i waited until he was 1.5" before releasing him, but mine are now about 3/8 of an inch and i am wondering if i could release them at around 5/8ths, i had the same thing happen with the grass shrimp

Cae home with a net breeder and the myid shrimp had arrived. unfortnately the serial cuttle had struck again. Down to 2. I don't think the other egg are going to hatch. 8 is not too bad though out of 11 eggs, considering they got cooled down in shipping. Next time I believe I will buy multiple net breeders and put one to a breeder I guess and have mysids waiting. They really seem to go for those compared to the pods.

well it appears as though the killer ate another one then died himself. I found one half consumed and him dead. I have 3 more eggs that have not hatched. I don't have much hope for them. I guess I will stick to my corals and regular fish for a while if they don't hatch. Not sure what the hell happened. All water parameters look great. Similar set up as my reef and fowlr tank. Just frustrating :/

IM sorry to hear about all that...

Its strange to hear about all the canablism.. I did have one cuttle guilty of multiple killings, but my first batch of eggs never showed this.In this batch I had 10-15 in one breeder net!

yea i have six left, and well fed, but i did have canabalism at first. ohh paradox, how big were your babies when you let them into the main tank, b/c the last cuttle i had i waited until it was about 1.5" and i realy hope i dont have to wiat this long for these guys.

Well was about to give them to the big toilet in the sky when I noticed that my cannable is still alive! He is in a stupor, but alive it seems. I do not really count on him living, but he is breathing.

Rushi-can you tell me what your parameters are? Including temp and salinity?? Really sorry to hear all that.

I need cuttle-I think it would really depend on the size of the tank and how much and complex your liverock is. I would wait until at least an inch, but if they are too small or you have too much cavernous live rock, you will have a daily heart attack trying to account for all the cuttles.

Yeah parameters are tep of 78, sal 025, amm 0, copper0, nitrite, 0, nitrate 5ppm, alk average, calc 350, PH 8.2 and that is the extent of my test kits. But the tank was cycled for 6 months prior to the cuttles and I did a 50% water change just before adding them (1 week prior).

yea my live rock has alot of holes in it so ill take your advice.