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5 Cuttle eggs coming tomorrow

Uber Alezz

Blue Ring
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Jan 11, 2010
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Ordered them off ParadisePets and I'm pretty excited.

I have everything set up for them just fine but I'm still iffy on the food issue.

I was thinking of ordering some copepods off LiveAquaria.com (http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/prod_display.cfm?c=830+2190+2593&pcatid=2593). Will that be fine for the baby cuttles? Or should I start off immediately with Mysis Shrimp? And if I do need Mysis shrimp will a bucket and an airstone keep them alive long enough to where its not a waste of money buying 100 of them?


Edit: Video of the hatched cuttles can be found here: Alex Catasus
 
Congratulations on the upcoming arrival of the eggs. I also used Paradise and had a great experience. Did you already get confirmation that the eggs are being shipped or did you just place your order online? If it is the latter then you should call and find out when they are shipping - that is what I had to do. I would order the mysid shrimp myself. You don't need a fancy setup: airstone, heater and proper salinity water. I use a light, but nothing fancy and food for them -that is very important. Once the cuttles hatch it will take a couple of days before they eat anyway...so you could wait til the eggs arrive and then overnight the mysids once they start hatching. Copepods are very, very small I think the minimum you hear of people using as food are Tiger Pods. I would go straight to the mysids. I use a hob filter (penguin) a 10 gallon tank, heater and pc light. I use marine flake for food. I wouldn't put more than 200 in a 10 gallon. Hope that helps.
Don't forget to post pictures once your eggs arrive.
 
Uber Alezz;151260 said:
Will a 5g bucket filled with 100 mysids and an airstone do?

I have some phytoplankton, should I feed them at all? If so, how often?

It's not ideal but it will do. 100 mysids won't last you long. You should setup at least a 10g unless you have access to mysids locally.

You should feed them meaty foods 2-3 times a day or they will eat each other. Feed baby brine, frozen brine, pellets, flakes, cyclopeeze. Anything meaty.
 
Cuttles are here and they're looking great.

The eggs vary in size, which doesn't really surprise me after reading all the journals, and 3 of them are very large and nearly translucent with active cuttles inside! One of the other 2 is medium sized, but is too dark to see through, while the 5th is especially small and nearly completely black.

And about the mysids, I think I'll buy 100 and split them down the middle into 2 5g buckets with airstones in each. My LFS is right down the street and has a constant supply of live brine. All I gotta do is order the mysids unless I can find them around some fish store here. What was that website you mentioned somewhere in another thread to order mysids from Almondsaz? I can't seem to find it...

Also any extra tips on my new little critters? Any little bits of information is always appreciated.

Edit: And there's no real alternative to mysids, is there? I'd love something that I could just go pick up at a store rather than order online...

Edit2: Never mind, found the site for the mysids. I'm gonna go ahead and pick up the air stones for them in an hour or two. How long do you guys think 50 mysids in a 5g bucket will last if I feed them brine shrimp?
 
If you have 5 baby cuttles they will likely start out eating 1-2 each day then move on to 2-4 shortly after. So lets say you go through 8 a day on average a few die. 50 should last 5-6 days.
 
Alright, that's not too bad, 50 bucks a month.

When should I change their diet and what should I eventually change their diet to?

Will ghost shrimp be a good food source down the road?
 
Alright, I have 100 mysid in a 5g bucket with just 2 airstones on 1 pump.

I hear I should feed them brine shrimp twice a day? There's no filtration in the tank so I'm worried about an ammonia spike due to feeding them.

My cuttles still haven't hatched yet either. What should I be looking for as a sign of them about to hatch? Do the eggs get smaller or change in color? And do they just peck their way through the egg or what?
 
I have all 5 eggs in one net breeder that's hanging in my main 30g tank. The net breeder has a fair amount of macro algae in it to stop the eggs from rolling around.
 
I went with a Coralife 65g Super skimmer.

After just the first 3 days it got a good amount of gunk out of my tank, it wasn't too pricy either.
 
I think those are great skimmers for the price point and the 65 is much better than the larger one. I assume your using it as a HOB vs in sump? Glad it is working out so well for you. That was my first skimmer on a 45g.
 
Today I woke up to my first cuttle! It had apparently hatched between 2 and 6am when the tank is pitch black so there was no way of watching the hatch, and I think it being completely dark out has something to do with the time in which it did hatch. It also likes to hide whenever I turn my tank light on.

When I woke up and checked out my tank this morning, I noticed one of my larger eggs had deflated and for a second their I was actually disappointed thinking that the egg didn't make it. Then I looked under the macro I have in their and saw my cuttle lying on the bottom completely white, and when I moved the algae to get a better look, it jetted away and turned its skin to a pattern of what looked like brown and white triangles, it almost looked like it had a cheesy Christmas sweater vest on lol :P

Anywho, I just put more than enough mysid shrimp in the net breeder, and I'm definitely doing something wrong with the mysids seeing as how nearly half of them are dead already. One swam next to my new cuttle and my cuttle attempted to strike but couldn't catch the mysid. Nothing has happened since as far as feeding goes, but I did notice some bipedal crawling and magnificently quick color changes between brown, red, and white. He's a pretty interesting critter :]
 

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