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Cuttle egg adventure

Your cuttles are complicated deepblue lol
I still have 3 hatchlings and 2 eggs that i see cuttles in but thoase i have no hope in lol im giving them til saturday and gnna cut them open, I have seen 1 eating but not striking and i keep putting 3 mysid in in the morning by afternoon theyre gone, i put 3 more in when i turn metal halide on, they are gone in the morning so i assume theyre eating or the mysid are escape artists. I tried catching them today with a shot glass but 2 of them inked and were very fast, i felt bad after a few attempts because they seems so scared so i stopped. Im consistently feeding my mysid new born bbs 2-3x daily and seem to have a lot of little babies in my tank now. its hard to see them all in the 40g breeder so not sure how many i have, more or less than what i started with. My dwarf seahorses had babies so i have about 30 dwarf seahorses in my tank now so need a lot of bbs lol. Thats about all i got for now.

Db are the mysids being eaten while your not looking or are they just staying in the net breeder?
 
Hmm.

Regarding the swimming - my first thought is that there is something irritating them or something going on with water quality. Earlier you wrote '286.4 ppm KH' - which is confusing ppm and dkh are both units. It looks like you are measuring in ppm, what test kit are you using and what are you adding to the tank to spike your alk? That could be the source of your problem right there. Any other additives, no matter how benign you thing them may be? Dechlor? Novaqua?
While we are on water quality, would you please post the actual numbers that you are getting for all parameters you are testing?
Any anemones in the tank or soft corals that might be putting out chemicals?


My second thought is that there is something wrong with them - genetically sub optimal, hatched early, damaged in the egg etc. My quick read (sorry, been swamped!) seems to show that you are removing them a lot and doing lots of water changes, is that true?

Sorry that you are dealing with this and thanks in advance for the info.

RR
 
lilalancarey;191151 said:
I tried catching them today with a shot glass but 2 of them inked and were very fast, i felt bad after a few attempts because they seems so scared so i stopped.
Click to expand...

Lilalancarey,

I would not remove your cuttles from the breeder net. DeepBlue is having separate issues from you.

Also, please be patient with the other eggs, they either are going to make it on their own, or they are not, if you cut them out, you greatly reduce their chance of survival. Female cuttlefish lay eggs over a period of months, so the eggs could be at a different stage of development and just not ready to hatch. Patience is the hardest thing about cuttle egg watching...
 
Thales,
The test kit I am using is API's Reef Master Test Kit. Do you recomend a better one? About a month ago I was having some problems with brown slime algae. I read somewhere that raising the alkalinity in the tank COULD help. So I began dosing with SeaBuffer by Instant Ocean. I didnt realizze the alkalinity had risen to such a high degree until after I lost my first cuttle 6 days ago. On that day, I preformed a 60%-ish water change and have not preformed another on since. I was planning on doing another one today. No other dosings have been used and no corals or anemones, or even fish are in the tank with them. I will post my parameters when I am done testing.

As I just stated, my water changes have been minimal. Movement has not been very much either. The first cuttle that hatched went trough a lot of movement, but other than that, very little. The eggs were moved a little, but VERY little--more than what they should be moved normally, but not by much.
I do recall about a day after Hatchling 2 and Hatchling 3 hatched, I saw a small white-ish ball about the size of a pin head in the bottom of the net breeder. Could this be a yolk? Maybe that is why they seem underdeveloped, they hatched early and didnt use their whole yolk? At the time, I didnt see this small ball as important, which is why it wasnt noted. That also means I dont have any pictures of it. After a few days, it just disapeared on its own.
 
I think what happened is something that is unfortunately pretty common - you got caught up in thinking bottled solutions actually help. The often don't help and even if they do, they often have other stuff in the mix that makes weird things happen. It wouldn't surprise me if the phosphate reading you are getting is a result of the addition of the product (of course, your phosphate may be high for other reasons). I can't find any information about Sea Buffer or what it actually is, but messing with pH and Alkalinity is often scary with scary results, and any change you see is often temporary. I certainly wouldn't mess with alkalinity without testing calcium at the same time. Your alkalinity is still high though we don't know what effect that might have on cephs. I might be more worried about whatever is in Sea Buffer.

I also wouldn't try to adjust any parameter in a system without testing after each addition to see what happened because it is so easy to overdose just about everything.

I would also stay away from things you read 'somewhere' that 'could' help. That kind of anecdote often leads to disaster. If you want more info on that let me know.

That said, I would run the tests again and see what you get. I would also like to know what your ammonia level is and your nitrite levels. Is this a new system?

That does sound like yolk, and I don't get concerned about not seeing hatchlings eat until way into the second week.
 
Thales;191164 said:
I think what happened is something that is unfortunately pretty common - you got caught up in thinking bottled solutions actually help.
Click to expand...
Just for the benefit of information, what I used is a powder supplement that contains (as listed on the container) Sodium Bicarbonate, Sodium Carbonate, and Sodium Borate.
 
cuttlegirl;191168 said:
Can you remind us on how big your tank is, what kind of filtration (protein skimmer?). How long has your tank been set up?
Click to expand...
Ill post a picture of my setup. Its a 29 gallon tank with the only filtration being a Reef Octopus protein skimmer rated for up to 120 gallon. The only animals in the tank are the cuttlefish.
This set-up is a very unconventional one.

 

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Before the eggs hatched, They were in my 44 gallon reef tank. I was having the brown slime algae problems, which would coat the net breeder very quickly. In result of this, I set up the 29 gallon "Cuttlefish tank". I used half new saltwater, and half old reef tank water to fill the cuttle tank. So this 29 gallon set up is very new. No dosings were added to the 29 gallon tank. The high alkalinity came from the 44 gallon tank's dosings.
 
DeepBlueWonders;191170 said:
Before the eggs hatched, They were in my 44 gallon reef tank. I was having the brown slime algae problems, which would coat the net breeder very quickly. In result of this, I set up the 29 gallon "Cuttlefish tank". I used half new saltwater, and half old reef tank water to fill the cuttle tank. So this 29 gallon set up is very new. No dosings were added to the 29 gallon tank. The high alkalinity came from the 44 gallon tank's dosings.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't be surprised if the Ammonia and Nitrite are elevated. For a new set up, Ammonia and Nitrite tests are critical.


Did you try covering the net breeders when they were in the 44 gallon tank to block the light to combat the algae?
 

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