Sorry I've been so lax on the updates. I am really busy but with summer coming I may have a little more time to do stuff. I have a bunch of pictures I need to upload and post here so hopefully I will be able to get some of them up.
I still have 5 cuttles left. The runt I let out a couple of weeks ago but she is still 25-50% smaller than the rest of them. I have 3 males and 1 female aside from the runt, who I believe is female but I am not positive yet. I have seen some bad competition between the males and hope that as the runt matures more the fighting will subside some. My cuttles mate regularly and I have been patiently awaiting eggs, which I finally spotted this afternoon. They are in a hole between 4 rocks (aquascaped as a possible octopus den), and are difficult to see. I believe there are at least 2 clutches down there but they are not very developed. I will wait a little bit longer and then move the rocks and take a better look at the eggs. My cuttles are 5.5 months old right now, and this is the first set of eggs they have laid. Paradox was able to get eggs much faster than I and I believe it is because I feed smaller portions than he does.
Up until this week, I have been solely feeding frozen shore shrimp, no larger than 1 inch in length. I would allot 2-3 per cuttle. This week I bought some silversides and the cuttles love them. They are much easier to feed than the shore shrimp as well. I am going to try to get some larger shrimp to feed them along with the silversides.
On Friday markings appeared on all of my cuttles that allows me to easily distinguish them from each other. Before this it was possible, but difficult to do. There is one dominant male, who has dark markings all over when he is showing off. Another male has a lot more white on him than the dominant when he is displaying, and I suspect him to be the male from the other clutch, however I am not certain. The third male is smaller than the others and I have seen him display the tactic of pretending to be a female in order to keep the other males from picking on him. The 4th cuttle is female, and the 5th is the runt. Before Friday, this was the way I had to tell them apart; there was no way to be sure until they displayed, aside from the runt. On Friday face-burn was found on 2 of my cuttles - the female and the small male. The male with more white has a bite mark on his skirt from the dominant male, and the dominant male has no blemishes. I may consider naming or numbering them so they are easier to talk about.
If all goes well I should have some eggs and babies available before July. I am going to see if the fish store I work at wants to take some for display and I am also going to contact the public aquarium here (The Living Planet) once I get a good population of cuttles to see if they want any.