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Been reading - a few questions

Rick Weiss

Hatchling
Registered
Joined
Dec 13, 2016
Messages
2
Location
Ball Ground, GA
I've been researching Cuttlefish, always been fascinated by them and was interested to learn that I could keep one in my BC29 with a couple modifications. The tank has been up for 6 years and is pretty stable at this point. There were a few things I was trying to find and am not completely clear on

1. How long are they on the mysid several time a day diet? Not a problem for me but I occasionally travel and don't want to leave too much work for the wife.

2. Is there any rough survival rate on eggs? From reading a couple threads I saw anything from 1 out of 10 to over half. With the size of my tank I can only really support 1 adult, so I was thinking of buying a small group of eggs.

3. Once they are full grown can you put enough food in the tank for 1-2 days (assuming fiddler crabs or shore shrimp). Again for the travel factor

4. From what i understand I will need to add a protein skimmer. Does anyone have experience with the units that will fit in the built in overflow being adequate or would I need an external skimmer.

Finally I see there are a couple places that have eggs in stock. I noticed several people mention NYAquatics who is OOS, but are there any to completely avoid?

Thanks for any help. If I am going to do this I want to make sure I do it right.
 
i am an Octo guy so I cant help on the cuttles but I have owned a couple BC29s and can help there. Few things I would suggest. One get the tunze 9002 "I think thats the number" Its a skimmer that fits in the second chamber and works well. There is also a collection cup thats a mod and works better then the stock. Do you have a media basket? There are so many good mods and upgrades for the BC29.
 
My experience is with Sepia bandensis.

Feeding - From hatching to about 2 weeks, I feed them baby brine shrimp and copepods. When I travelled, they were 3 weeks old. I stocked the tank and sump with copepods (~500) and amphipods (~300) for the four days I was gone. At week 4, they were eating mysis, amphipods, guppies, grass and ghost shrimp. From 6 weeks onward, I varied the diet to include crayfish, mollies, fiddler and emerald crabs.

I found this video helpful -
- from the Monterey Bay Aquarium
 
1. On mysids a couple of weeks- they are very expensive weeks as I recall...
2. Hatch rate seems about right
3. My experience is that you should still have someone check on the tank while you are traveling - at least with me, if I was going to have something fail on the tank it either happened at 4:59 on a Friday afternoon or while I was away.
4. Yes, you will need a protein skimmer

Good luck!
 

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