• Looking to buy a cephalopod? Check out Tomh's Cephs Forum, and this post in particular shares important info about our policies as it relates to responsible ceph-keeping.

Anyone ever kept Sepia Apama?

Octopusi

Pygmy Octopus
Registered
Joined
Jan 27, 2006
Messages
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Hey guys, I was wondering if anyone has every successfully kept Sepia apama cuttlefish, there are many smaller ones( 4-6 inches )around the rock jetties near my house (perth australia). people catch them fishing all the time.

ive successfully kept octopus before when i lived in asia - much thanks to the info from this site! At the moment I have a 50 gallon thats been running with local ocean small fish for the past year, i realise an upgrade would be needed to keep apama for its life as they get HUGE.

what do u guys think about keeping a small one for a few months.. do cuttles release well after being kept in captivity?
 
Someone who just joined wamas posted pics of their sepia apama, but didn't tell us anything about the set up. I don't know about ausies as they tend to catch pretty much their whole fish tank in the ocean, but here, the general rule of thumb is not ever to release anything from captivity due to diseases that can come from it.
 
I noticed those pics, looks like an aqua culture project or something.
I believe that most of the marine fish that are sold here in western australia come from the northern half of the west coast. ive never seen a cuttlefish for sale though.
 
Octopusi;140846 said:
Hey guys, I was wondering if anyone has every successfully kept Sepia apama cuttlefish, there are many smaller ones( 4-6 inches )around the rock jetties near my house (perth australia). people catch them fishing all the time.

ive successfully kept octopus before when i lived in asia - much thanks to the info from this site! At the moment I have a 50 gallon thats been running with local ocean small fish for the past year, i realise an upgrade would be needed to keep apama for its life as they get HUGE.

what do u guys think about keeping a small one for a few months.. do cuttles release well after being kept in captivity?

There is no recorded evidence of being able to raise Sepia apama in captivity! Even BHP Billiton in their Environmental Impact Statement for the proposed Olympic Dam Uranium Mine Expansion could not raise the cephalods to maturity.

Sepia apama live 12 - 18months, grow to a metre in length, and can weigh in excess of 5 kilograms. Most animals including fish will only grow to an appropriate size in proportion to its environment. So if you have a small tank it would be small! And if you had a large tank it would larger than the small tank - BUT it would never be HUGE!

NEVER release a captive animal back to the environment as it leads to diseases in the natural population and the animal(s) doesn't know how to fend for itself or what to eat - therefore it will probably starve to death or BE eaten by something else.

Hope this answers sum of your questions
Cheers aussiecuttlefis
Home of Sepia apama - the Giant Australian Cuttlefish
 
Octopusi;140851 said:
I noticed those pics, looks like an aqua culture project or something.
I believe that most of the marine fish that are sold here in western australia come from the northern half of the west coast. ive never seen a cuttlefish for sale though.

I would be very surprised if you could buy a Sepia apama as they are supposedly protected, well they are in the Upper Spencer Gulf, South Australia where they aggregate in their hundreds of thousands at Point Lowly each year to spawn from late April till early September. They mate once and then die!!

Cheers aussiecuttlefis
Home of Sepia apama - the Giant Australian Cuttlefish
 
Salt water fish and animals do not grow to the "appropriate size" of their environment, they grow until they get to that "appropriate size" and then die. The size of the environment does not effect the size to which they grow, however this is supposedly true in fresh water, I wouldn't know though.
 

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