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Babies!!

Joined
Apr 23, 2011
Messages
11
Long time reader first time writer. :biggrin2:

Just thought I would post some pics. I received 14 eggs from my LFS, and so far 7 have hatched. Three of them are eating mysids from Paul Sachs, and the others are still newborns and hiding out. It looks like a couple eggs are duds, but I can see three more are ready to hatch any day.

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About when should I start trying to offer frozen, and should I stick with frozen pe mysis? Also if anyone is around St. Louis MO, I plan on only keeping three so I'ld be willing to trade, or sell quit a few. :smile:
 
Cute babies!

You can start offering (no telling if they will eat...) frozen when you can see them stalking and capturing prey. Make sure that the frozen food has eyes, the cuttles seem to recognize it as food if it has eyes. Someone (and I can't remember who) "drew" eyes on frozen food once.
 
You may need to stir the frozen food a little bit to catch the cuttle's attention with a small rod etc. Also when they become a little older you can start feeding them mysis shrimp. But for now im not sure, you may have to feed them rotifers. I've heard that brine shrimp (fully grown) lacks in nutrients.

Scratch that, you may feed them mysis shrimp. May I ask you, how often do you feed them?

Wish you good luck on raising these cuttle babies!
 
Thanks for the advice about the eyes. Lol I'll give it a try with the older ones.

I offer them food about three times a day. I just make sure there is a mysid or two in there all the time. I had two more hatch last night, and that brings me to nine little aliens. :-/
 
Cuddlycuttlefsh;186207 said:
You may need to stir the frozen food a little bit to catch the cuttle's attention with a small rod etc. Also when they become a little older you can start feeding them mysis shrimp. But for now im not sure, you may have to feed them rotifers. I've heard that brine shrimp (fully grown) lacks in nutrients.


It usually better to have the flow in their tank to be enough to keep the thawed frozen food moving than to stir the water. Or squirts from a turkey baster from a distance.
Rotifers are way too small for hatchling S. bandensis to eat, or even notice. :biggrin2:
 
I'm happy to report that I got four of the nine to eat frozen mysis last night. I used a pipette from my refractometer to gently blow them, and the cuttles went right for them. Hopefully this weeks mysids will be the last order!
 
Update: I had one that was having problems eating and the rest were growing much faster, so I let him free into the DT. Hopefully I see him again.
The others are all doing great! The pe-mysis were to large for them, but I found some smaller frozen ones and they go nuts over them.

Is it possible to over feed them? They each eat two or three mysids three times a day.
 
How adorable!!! They eat a lot at this stage, so I don't really think that you can overfeed. There is some evidence that feeding less food can extend their life spans. I just had a hard time not feeding them when they would beg for food with their cute little eyes...
 
CG, I have not worked with cuttles and have read the reduced feeding idea with octos but I don't know that this applies to juveniles of either (especially animals under a couple of months old). I do wish we could get a real study on this where temperature is removed from the equation as I think temp has always been part of the observations and the lowered food consumption may be related more to that than to the amount of food intake. My reasoning for challenging the reduced food thinking is that, with the octopuses I have kept, once they are sated, they have no interest in food and their intake generally tapers off naturally as they age. Cuttles may be more like fish and over eat if there is excess food but I have not see this with the octopuses.

As a cautionary note though, there is anticdotal evidence that too much live food constantly in the tank causes problems. This seems to be more with swimming things than crawling things but cuttles seem to stop eating and octos seem to kill without eating (purely anticdotal) when there is too much of a good thing swimming in their environment.
 
D,

I guess I should have been more clear. There is some evidence that not overfeeding adults can lengthen their lifespan. One of mine lived to 14 months. I have to agree with you D that a good scientific study separating temperature and food quantity would be helpful.
 
I really need to get a different camera, but I tried taking a few pics tonight. I have eight babies growing like crazy and they all are eating frozen mysis.. Hopefully all eight live and I can rehome five of them.
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6 new babies and this post saved us!

Thanks so much for these posts! Our shipment of live myces didn't come in today and the babies are already one day without food. We have frozen myces and made sure to choose the ones with eyes! That did the trick! So happy to be able to feed some frozen on days that live aren't available!
 

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