[Cuttlefish Eggs]: Lazarus, Nib, Blot and Rorschach - Sepia bandensis journal

Do any of you kind folks have experience in alcohol preserving your cephs after they pass? I have some museum friends that have lent me some resources (including a link to an article on TONMO about architeuthis prep protocol!). From what I gather, you fix in formalin bath first, and then preserve in ethyl alcohol at around 70% dilution.
 
That is how I do it as well. Note that when you put them in the formalin they will remain in their first exposure position. This is less important with cuttlefish than with octopuses but you do want to put them in a large enough container to allow them full extension and not be smushed. You will want to rinse them well with saltwater before transferring to alcohol. Buffered saltwater has been recommended but I just use the same water I use for water changes. I use the 91% rather than the more common 70% alcohol. Sometimes you have to look for it but most pharmacies/pharmacy departments carry both.
 
Hey guys, this weekend I tested my water (I usually test weekly unless something appears out of the ordinary), and found the nitrates had skyrocketed. At least 160 ppm according to my test. I recently added quite a few feeder shrimp into my breeder net, I'm wondering if that may have done it. SO STUPID. I've done several water changes (about ten gallons a day, this is a system with about 50 gallons total) for the last 3 days. I have the nitrates down to somewhere between 60 to 80 ppm. There has been 0 ammonia, no pH shift, no nitrites. Just a LOT of nitrates. Amazingly, the cuttles don't seem affected at all. No behavioral changes. I realize they produce a lot of waste. I also found a dead turbo snail on saturday, so its possible that was the source initially. I'll be keeping my feeders in a separate tank from now on and watching everything like a hawk. Curious what others' nitrate levels hover at? Before this mine were at around 40, but its possible that the combined waste from 4 now larger cuttles is doing it. Skimmer is working well, pulling skimmate, so it doesn't seem to be that. I usually do about a 25% change weekly.
 
Fortunately, it appears your bacteria handled the overload safely. Often it is hard to convince new aquarium hobbyists of the necessity to actively cycle a new ceph tank well beyond the LFS saying they can start adding fish (ie "it is cycled" after a month or less because the ammonia and nitrites are not detectable).
 
Oh another interesting side note: After that big nitrate spike, most of my corals actually opened up more and appeared to actually look healthier. Go figure.

I have read that over skimming might not be good for corals and that some coral hobbyist recommend against using a skimmer. I keep a very limited selection of corals and have never attempted a real "reef" tank so don't have observations but increased polyp feeding during limited nitrate rises may have its benefits.
 
So I woke up, checked the tank, and found eggs this morning. I count at least 3 but they're all tucked away in the back, so it's hard to see. There may be more. She's not quite 5 months old, but I noticed one of the 4 acting differently this week; much more shy than usual, and then actually observed what looked like mating, so clearly I was wrong about having all males. image.jpeg
 
She should continue producing eggs for quite some time now. Getting them to hatch seems to be much harder than the eggs we get from the wild but some keepers (not me) have been successful with Gen 2. I don't think we have a journal for Gen 3. If I recall correctly, the "middle" group of eggs have been the most likely but, with mine, the first group matured almost to hatching but none after the first 10 or so seemed to mature.
 

Shop Amazon

Shop Amazon
Shop Amazon; support TONMO!
Shop Amazon
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon and affiliated sites.
Back
Top