HI

AQStudent

Hatchling
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Joined
Nov 19, 2014
Messages
5
Location
Oregon
Hi all,

I am a student in an aquarium science program. I'm currently working on a class project researching S. pharaonis husbandry, specifically for public display purposes. Would anyone be willing to share some of their experiences keeping these animals? What you love about it? Life support must haves? Difficulties? Successes?

Any input would be awesome!

Thank you!
 
When you say "for display purposes" so you mean you want to display the S. Pharaonis publically and record the mateing? Or are you trying to display the mateing publically?
Additionally how many are you going to try and keep and how large an aquarium will you be using?
 
I've raise S. pharaonic before when I was working for the NRCC. Generally they are very similar to keeping S. officinalis, except they are a warm water species and grow a little bit bigger. If you have specific questions I would be happy to answer them. If I remember right we raised them through at least 5 generations.
 
Thanks for the responses and welcome!

Let me tell you a little more about myself and specifically what I am hoping to gain from posting here.
My name is Clare and I am currently attending the Aquarium Science Program at Oregon Coast Community College.

For this project, I am researching S. pharaonis and proposing a basic theoretical system for educational/public display (basically at a public aquarium). I need to communicate with at least one person involved in the professional care of that species and include that interview in my report. I have found some wonderful information on cuttlefish care and some really interesting articles on Bret Grasse's larval rearing system at MBA. I would love to gain a better perspective on what it is like to actually care for these animals. What are the challenges? What works and what doesn't?

Thanks again!
 
As far as displaying the cuttlefish, I liked S. pharaonis because it had a more interesting color pattern than S. officinalis and being a warm water species you did not need a chiller. In general you could only display them in a species only tank as they would most likely eat any fish/crustacean in there with them. The species don't make as good a cuttlefish to display compared to S. bandensis as they grow too large for most aquariums to display adequately, this goes for S. officinalis also. Many times I've seen them displayed in relatively small aquariums which results in stunted growth and/or split cuttlebones and other problems. We kept our adults in tanks 15-20 ft in length and roughly 15ft wide and 3-5 ft deep. In tanks of this size S. pharaonis would reach a size of around 15 inches body length.

As far as husbandry, starting from eggs we would incubate them in baskets suspending in the hatching tank (~5ft diameter, 3ft high) it is important to keep the tanks covered and dark as once they are ~2/3 developed (~20 days old) they can hatch prematurely if there are sudden changes in light or water conditions usually leading to death. Once they hatch, ~30days depending on temperature, they would swim through the basket into the main hatching tank. As soon as they hatch they can start feeing, we started them on wild caught live mysid shrimp and would feed them 6 times a day. If I remember correctly we wanted to feed roughly 3 mysid shrimp per hatchling per feeding, but basically you want there to still be shrimp in the tank when you feed again (but not too much). Once they got to about 1/2 inch we started feeding them live grass shrimp (.5-1 inch). Once they got to 3-4 inches we would move them into a large tank and switch them to frozen shrimp. When they get mature you can have problems with large males chasing females and other males around the tank and hurting them.

Overall the hardest part of raising them is all the live food required when they are young, although not as much a problem if you only have a few but when you have hundreds it add up :smile:. The other aspect is that they only live 9-12 months on average so if you want to continuously display them you basically have to culture them or have some like the NRCC do it for you.

Let me know if you have any questions
 

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