New Cuttlefish Journal

Hey there, sorry to hear about the deaths. This does happen and its difficult to say what the cause is. I can definitely understand the frustration of having deaths and not being able to determine the reasons for it. This often occurs when all parameters seem perfect. There may very well be some other area in which we do not normally test for that is involved. The fact is, there is still much that we do not know. Your writing about the experiences even if they may be heartbreaking is the best thing to do for it just adds more information to work on.

You probably have an extra cuttle because I threw an extra egg in there because there was one that looked very questionable to me that was attached in the cluster. So the questionable egg probably turned out to be viable.

Good luck with the rest of your group! They probably will not eat for a few days, so remember to feed your mysids, to reduce canabolism!
 
Nice, that explains the extra egg! Thanks for throwing an extra one in. It must have been almost totally deflated when it arrived, and then bounced back. Upon arrival, there were obviously 10 fully inflated eggs, so I did not pay much attention to the deflated ones. Although this morning when I checked on them, I noticed that the extra egg is partially deflated, and I could not see any movement from inside. The other remaining egg is very full and has a very visible live baby moving around in there. I can't see any yolk left, so it should be hatching very soon as well. But I will keep the other one around for a bit just in case...
All the babies look great, and in the plastic breeder with the three larger babies, I found a partially eaten mysid...although that is probably just the work of the other two mysids in there...
Speaking of the mysis, I have them set up all by themselves in a 45 gal with live rock and macroalgae, so there is plenty of room and hiding places for them. I have tried a couple different foods, and they the one they seem to like the best is Ocean Nutrition's Prime Reef flakes. They literally go into a feeding frenzy as soon as it hits the water. So hopefully that will help keep cannabalism down long enough to keep the baby cuttles fed. If I am lucky, maybe they will actually start to breed faster than they cannibalize. That would be great to have a self-renewing source of mysis handy for baby cuttles.
 
Another update--we have 7 babies alive and well. The two remaining eggs ended up not hatching, although at one point I could see babies moving in both of them. A day or two after my last update, both eggs deflated and went bad. After it was clear that the babies inside were no longer living, I opened up both eggs and found some white matter, along with 2 tiny cuttlebones. :cry:
One of the babies died from unknown causes soon after that, leaving 7 that are doing well.
I have them set up in two groups in plastic breeder containers, with a thin layer of fine sand on the bottom and several types of macroalgae to hide in. I had been making sure that there are 2-3 live mysids in each container, and monitoring them to see if the babies were eating yet. But no mysids seemed to be disappearing.
Then, last night after lights out, I watched them hunting for the first time! I saw two babies eating mysids, and another two hunting and striking without catching anything. They have an interesting hunting technique--they slowly creep along close to the ground, using two tentacles to "walk". They stretch out two of their upper tentacles and hold them close together, sticking straight out, then slowly wave them around. They do a pretty good imitation of a tiny nassarius snail crawling along the ground. They use this technique to get close enough to the mysids to strike (although some of them need to work on their aim :rolleyes:).
In the videos I have watched of other peoples' cuttles hunting, even the babies seem to hover around and chase their prey. Has anyone else noticed their hatchlings using this possible snail mimicry to stalk their prey? It is definitely an interesting behavior anyhow. Tonight I will try to get some pics or video, although I don't know if they will start hunting with the lights on. And without the lights, I may not be able to get a clear image of them. But we will see...

Just for fun, here is a pic of one of the little guys perched in the macroalgae.
 

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Ive seen this behaviour,but they dont seem to do this anymore after a couple weeks are they are larger/confident enough to just grab whatever is moving. Never thought about how it resembles a snail, but your right..it does!

Not sure why you are having these losses. Do you run carbon?
 
That is cool about the "snail" behavior...although I can't wait for them to start cruising around and hunting!

Yes, I do run carbon on the tank, just in case...

I am not sure about the losses either...I have been racking my brain for possible causes, and I can't come up with anything. I don't know what would cause some to thrive and others right next to them to die. I had assumed that there was probably a pretty high mortality rate with these guys, as with many species that produce large numbers of eggs.

I am just glad that 7 of them have made it this far, and have finally begun to feed...They have really increased in size over the past couple days. So hopefully now that they are eating and growing, it will be smooth sailing from here on out...
 
Another quick update--
All 7 of the little guys are alive and well. I have seen them all hunting and eating, and they are growing noticeably. They are feeding on live mysis and amphipods, although a couple of the smaller babies still seem to prefer Tigger-pods--I think the larger prey still intimidates them at this point.
I have tried frozen mysis, but no takers yet. I am hoping that as they get bigger and bolder, they will start to make the switch. I have tried using the current from a plastic pipette to make the mysis move a little, and I have also tried "fishing" for them with one of the larger mysis skewered on the end of a length of fishing line. But still no interest.
They are also growing in their ability to change color/pattern/texture, and they are becoming much more active. They are starting to look and act much more like adult cuttles, and growing out of the "baby stage" of spending most of their time hiding or creeping around pretending to be little snails :smile:
More updates/pics coming soon!
 
Another update--
After hearing about incidences of cannibalism, I got a couple more plastic breeders and separated the babies into smaller groups according to size. There was one cuttle in the group that had grown to twice the size of the others, and he got his own container. I put the two medium-sized ones in another container, and kept the 3 smallest babies together. The next day, I found the smallest baby dead and partially eaten. It may have been amphipods or bristleworms that fed on it, though.
The remaining six have been going strong for the past week, feeding on more live mysis and amphipods. Because of the holidays, I ended up running out of mysis a few days before the next shipment was due. Luckily, an understanding LFS let me collect dozens of amphipods out of their refugiums to keep my cuttles well fed :smile:
When the mysis finally did arrive, the babies still seemed to prefer the 'pods. And no luck getting them on frozen mysis yet either. I have tried both the Hikari brand and the much larger PE mysis. I did get one baby to strike at one of the frozen ones, but then it kicked it away in disgust.
But they are all eating and growing and doing well. Here are a few more recent pics--one perched in the macroalgae, and another with a face full of food.
 

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Yep, they do eat a lot! And it is crazy how much of that food that they convert into growth! Seems like they get bigger every time I look at them.
I have tried to be very careful about providing plenty of food for the babies, and checking 3-4 times a day to make sure there is always food available to them (which is probably the reason I have not gotten any of them to take frozen yet--they are stuffing their faces with live food constantly throughout the day, so they never have a chance to get hungry enough to try frozen :wink:
 
Day 30...

Down to 5--the smallest cuttle passed away yesterday from unknown causes. I had seen it eat, but it was not growing like the others were--it was still pretty much hatchling size, and the babies are now a month old. The remaining 5 are getting HUGE--the largest is at 1/2" now, and the others are not far behind!
They are still feeding on live mysis and large amphipods. I keep trying frozen, but no luck yet. They are getting large enough that the mysis are not much more than a snack. I have tried offering some of the small shore shrimp (palaemonetes vulgaris), but the cuttles act like they are afraid of them.
The cuttles hide most of the day, perched in the macroalgae. I mainly see them feed at night, right after lights out. I can't wait for the point that they get more active and start to associate me with food, so they will come out and beg when I am around. But I am glad that this many have made it this far, and are doing well.
 

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They will start 'doing' more things at around 3-4 months when they start acting thier sex. Males will flare up/flash against each others and males and females will...
 

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