Cuttle Eggs came in...

[Cephdoc]

Thats interesting! How many babies will it take to go through 200-500 mysids and i dont know 200 amphipods at a time? Would this last more than a week?

 

[SabrinaR]

I dont honestly know. I only have the one baby right now and its not eating lol. It depends on how you feed and how many you have to feed. Others have said that they feed 2 a day at first and then close to the one month mark they are feeding 5-10 maybe more or less... just depends on the cuttle I would think. It will def get more expensive before it gets cheaper lol. The amphipods I have read should wait until they are older. I guess they are hard to catch for the cuttles and tough to eat.

The down side is the mysids dont live very long and will kill each other so keeping them long term is unlikely and a PITA to try.

 

[Cephdoc]

Yea, ive read the same thing. I look at the mysids as a waste of money for a short while. For example, you bought 100, and for the time being there is onle one cuttle hatched and he wont eat 100 before they start to eat each other more and more. Unless you are saying you could keep them for maybe a couple weeks at most before any real damage is done. The only down side to keeping them is the price. And i dont have any idea what its going to be like till i actually do it soon. Is it really that much more expensive than octopus?

 

[Cephdoc]

I am waiting for a phone call from one of my LFS later today, sometime after probably 8pm. About whether he can get me in some eggs or not. Nervous and excited all in the same! LOL, wish me luck if not. Idk what i will do about eggs.

 

[SabrinaR]

I would say that yes it will be more expensive than an octopus. With cuttles you have to feed the food. With octopuses all I ever had to do was buy 20 crabs every two weeks and a bag of frozen raw shrimp. That came to about 50$ a month. With the cuttles including shipping I am already there and I will have more food to buy. I still dont know how many I will have hatch and it could be as much as 6 weeks before I am sure that they will even hatch. So I will have to buy live food for the one and then continue to do so for the next 2 months depending on hatch times.

Its def not for the weak willed thats for sure.

Good luck to you in finding cuttles. Its often difficult to find any cephs at all... let alone the kind we are looking for. It can be a frustrating time thats for sure. I always start looking about a month before I am ready. That way if I do stumble upon what I am looking for I can see if I can wing it until I would be ready.

In this case I was going to take down my 55 but since I bought the cuttle eggs I figured I should keep it up just in case I ended up with 5 cuttles... I would need 2 tanks.

 

[Cephdoc]

I have a 75, how many do you think i should attempt to keep? Like i said i was thinking 5-6? But with food being what it is expense wise, maybe i should cut back?

 

[SabrinaR]

I think in a 75 you could keep 4 but I am not an expert. I think it also depends on the mix you have too, how many females to males and so on.

The cuttlefish I had hatched died last night.

 

[Cephdoc]

Sorry for the loss.

 

[SabrinaR]

I think it was the temp stress... For some reason the tank wouldnt warm more than 74 degrees. It has since gone back up but I am worried that the other eggs wont hatch because of the temp flux.

I have put the mysid shrimp in a breeder net in the fish tank... I figure this way I wont have to change out the water every day and hopefully some will stay alive long enough to feed the other cuttles when/if they hatch.

 

[Cephdoc]

What do you have your temp set at?

 

[SabrinaR]

I have it set for 78.

 

[Cephdoc]

Yea, same here. I didnt get a call from my LFS tonight so idk what im going to do

 

[SabrinaR]

Well, call my LFS and see what they say. I will be calling in the morning to find out if they will have any.

 

[Cephdoc]

What does your tank look like? Is it a reef?

 

[SabrinaR]

It used to be. I took everything out when I started keeping octopuses. Now with the cuttles if I still had my reef lighting I could put more corals in it. I still would be careful if you are going to put some in with cuttles though LPS are mostly stinging.

I had thought about non photosynthetic corals for my octo/cuttle tank but you still have to take care because some of them have wires/barbs and/or sting.