Neogonodactylus;90679 said:
The bait shop that I buy from said that he had used a different supplier who catches them in a different location in the bay. I suspect some sort of pollutant, perhaps heavy metals. In the mean time I've switched back to frozen grass shrimp and the mortality is down.Roy
One of my greatest concerns when rearing squid. I've used a mix of species to rear these squid:
Tenagomysis novaezelandiae, days 1-20 (and these are known from a heavily polluted site only);
T. chiltoni (days 20-40/50), and the habitat in which this mysid occurs is almost gone locally; and for days 50-80
Gambusia affinis (from a few ponds that are not exactly healthy, but in which the fish thrives) and
Palaemon affinis, from an adjacent piece of estuary, also highly modified and with very high heavy metal concentrations. From ~ 80 days I can provide sufficient numbers of juvenile yellow-eyed mullet (
Aldrichetta forsteri) and palaemonid shrimp to keep ~ 20-30 squid going, but it is exhausting work. After ~ 120 days they will take dead fish, but have to be weaned on to them, and only after they've eaten them live (and recognise them).
Basically everything in their diet up to ~ 80 days is likely polluted, but there is no other readily available or appropriate prey item to collect for them. It would be interesting to compare heavy metal concentrations in these squid reared in captivity with comparable-sized animals taken in the wild.
