[Cuttlefish Eggs]: Jabba, Jool, Ziro, Zorba - S. Bandensis

[DWhatley]

@cuttlegirl "brave" is not the best operative word

 

[DWhatley]

Gen2 - One egg today Total 31
Gen2 - Lost one of the two remaining hatchlings. 1 of 3 Alive

I bought an incandescent 2 watt bulb to try candling again (first attempt was with an LED). The brighter bulb worked a little better but my macro photography needs a lot of work . I did see this one move twice but it refused to be active when I tried to video.

 

[Nathalanti]

I am too poor to even consider anything like this and read (with joy) the story here of a tank and a dream, turning into two generations of money hungry adorable camera friendly friends. This is what some people dream of being able to do, and you Mr DWhatley, make me a happier person. The biggest thing I want to know now is how long until they get moved into the bigger tank?

Additionally (I guess) personally I'd love to see a full feeding of your four larger cuttles, just so I can see how long the process takes and see more of their personalities.

Ahh the love of little Chuthulites feeding and breeding.

 

[DWhatley]

LOL, slight correction, that is MRS DWhatley (Just "D" for short) Cuttles are, by far, the most expensive animal I have ever kept because of the feeding regime and because there are 4 instead of one. Cost of feeding far exceeds octopuses or nautiluses (or dogs and cats) of the same number.

I am weaning them to frozen and they are being pills about eating more than one so the feeding time is about 30 minutes to be sure everyone gets two shrimp, then I usually give them one live. One takes frozen easily often going after my fingers (no bites though), another paces the front and is very resistant, another waits for everyone else to eat and then comes to dinner and another can be coaxed into taking one with its arms rather than using its tentacles. With live I could (but don't) just dump a bunch in the tank and likely everyone would eat (however, two will stuff at least two shrimp in their arms, the other two wait until they eat one before going after another so I worry about everybody getting enough).

So far the 40 gallon with lots of places to hide has been fine. I saw a little aggression when they first started mating but the marks were on the females, not male to male confrontations and I have not seen marks on any for last week or so. I have a larger tank for them but am not sure if I will need it. I think having two females and two males has been helpful and they are currently only a little over 2" in length. I am still learning as I go and am glad I have a couple of coaches!

 

[DWhatley]

Gen 2 - Another hatchling yesterday 2 of 4 alive

Ordering more mysid today, the first batch did not live long. I am adding Cyclop-eeze, mixed pods and as many mysid as I can still find twice a day to the net but don't know if they are eating.

 

[DWhatley]

I found an egg with very little ink left so I tried videoing again. This was take 16 of a sequence of 30 second videos and I finally caught movement. I reviewed the others to see if I missed something and did notice that many showed breathing. Notice how big the yolk is (you can just see the arms if you click on the still to enlarge).

 

[Inkman]

Hey d ive been really thinking about a couple cuddles but I need a little exspirienced help on what to do or expect and list of equipment I need to house some if you would share a little exsperience with me lol

 

[DWhatley]

Inkman, I am new to cuttlefish. I housed three years ago and tried eggs at one other time but but neither attempt was successful (cuttles died after a few months and eggs did not hatch). Since then I have read all of our journals, watching the successes, pseudo-successes and failures. I feel that the test of how well I do this time will be if I can keep them going to Gen 3. I feel Gen 1 (from wild caught eggs) has gone well but the expense of feeding them is a strong negative (choice of food is likely the reason for my initial failure but the eggs may not have been fertile as they were the last of over 100 produced by a single female). Please do follow along and ask questions. If I cannot answer, one of our experienced cuttlefish people will hopefully chime in.

As far as environment, I find octopus tank hardware (without the need a secure top) ideal. Cuttlefish don't climb around on (but do hide within so lots of caves) the live rock so there are more options to making the tank interesting. However, I am using my small octopus/baby octopus grow out 40 gallon tank so there is little coral or other interesting occupants (there are two serpent stars that are permanent residence as well as some octo safe polyps and mushrooms). The tank uses carbon in a filter sock and a small skimmer set in a shallow 15 gallon sump. I have no power heads in the tank but decent movement from the return. I do a 5 gallon water change every week. Initially, I planned to move them to the 60 split tank but so far there is no indication they are not comfortable in the 40 (I think the live rock arrangement and the 2:2 male female ratio helps but that is just a guess. I am keeping the 60 available if I see signs of serious fighting, they grow too large for the 40 or if I have a mix of adults and juveniles as the eggs mature.

 

[DWhatley]

At the request of @Nathalanati I decided to video feeding the cuttles tonight and gave them live crabs so that the process would not be overly long . Note my little picky princess (Jool). She almost always swims under the egg net at supper time and takes her sweet time deciding to accept her food. This may actually be an issue with her vision but I attribute it to her personality. Watch as she paces the front and then gets mad (observe the dark circle around her eyes) when everyone else gets fed and she thinks she has missed out. Notice her eyes again when she sees she is being offered a crab.

 

[Inkman]

Lol jealous much

 

[Nathalanti]

You don't need to shorten or specialise or otherwise make their feeding different from normal, I'll quite happily sit through and watch things like this for hours.
Maybe it's just me, but I enjoy and find this kind of thing exciting. Watching pets grow and feed. I'll happily watch a 10 min video of a floating dead shrimp if I knew at some point something was gonna nom it.

While this may be macarb, any chance we can see the damage they do to you if they bite you? be it a fingernail scratch or what?
I can't ever get these as pets, so am very interested in what human interactions they have and the outcomes. (Some fish love to nibble at fingers, others refuse to have anything to do with them at all.)

 

[DWhatley]

To satisfy your macabre curiosity you will have to go to the Octopus Care forum and the Octopus Bites sticky (yellow posts at the top of forums). We don't have any recorded damage from cuttlefish bites. When the little guy has grabbed my finger (including zapping me before my finger - and the food - is in the water, there is no beak contact. It is startling but not in the least bit painful. I think I have a video posted but did not catch one of the more spectacular out of the water leaps (this one also tried to get to the live shrimp that sat on a bowl on top of the aquarium lid).

I have avoided allowing the nautilus to bring my fingers close to his beak. I have been told their buccal muscle is larger and stronger than the octopuses we keep and I have seen the damage he has done to his shipping bag so I will continue to wonder how painful it might be.

 

[DWhatley]

I looked for the video but realized this was one that was both in poor focus and did not transfer properly to my hard drive. I found the original still on the camera. This "attack" was a bit of a set-up. She had just come almost fully out of the water after her supper so I attempted to get her to reenact the scene. You will have to excuse the focus, the one before was nicely sharp but she failed to come after the shrimp (because this would have been her second) and it took a bit of coaxing to get her to cooperate.

 

[Inkman]

So how long do u have to feed mysis shrimp to the baby cuttles and compared to an octopus how hard is it to raise say 2 cuttles a male and female

 

[DWhatley]

Gen 2 - 1 hatchling born, 1 died. Total 2 of 5 alive

I am feeding a combination of frozen daphnia, frozen Cyclop-eeze and live mysid. The oldest surviving immediately actively fed on the thawed daphnia (tried the frozen while waiting for the second batch of mysid, first batch only survived 3 days). This is the first Gen 2 cuttle I have seen actively eat.

I have placed the mysid in the bio orb with the 20 opae shrimp that were not fed to the adults. I am feeding the daphnia to the mysid that arrived today and they appear to be actively feeding. Opae are supposed to be algae eaters (I feed them spiralina) but they too seem to like the daphnia. Fortunately, the Opae do not seem at all interested in the mysid and are too big for the mysid to attack.

@Inkman I looked back at my journal notes and came up with the following approximations:

3 weeks mysid - 2-3 times a day
3 weeks small shrimp (Opae or tiny shore shrimp) 2 times a day
currently 3-4 large live shore shrimp, 2-3 frozen beheaded and shelled bait (slightly larger than shore shrimp after cleaning) shrimp or 1 live crab daily

They will actively hunt the live food but it is necessary to hand feed and coax them to eat the thawed.