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Northern Pygmy Squid (Idiosepius paradoxus)

AquaticEngineer

GPO
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Jan 2, 2011
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I should be getting some of these guys later this week, planning on just enjoying them in my macro coldwater tank and hoping for babies :smile: Anyone ever reared these guys before?

Northern Pygmy Squid(Idiosepius paradoxus)
Idiosepius paradoxus - Wikipedia
himeika1-20060408.jpg
 
Hope it all goes well :biggrin2: Only getting 8 of them in so I am going to keep a couple and sell the others to locals here that wanted to try breeding them as well. One of them does cuttlefish breeding already and supplies most of the local stores with theirs and we had talked about getting him set up with the local bobtail squid before.
 
It would be great if you would start a journal on what you learn from these (even if you lose them all). We added "squid" as a title topic to the Journals forum so it awaits anything you will share :biggrin2:
 
i will for sure :smile: Found out they are sexually dimorphic with the females being larger and that their prey is mostly an amphipod species that is rediculously abundant on both sides of the north pacific :smile:

I'd like to find someone here willing to try eggs because the females will lay up to 42 clusters within 70 days with 100+ eggs each time! Free eggs, just pay the shipping :smile:
 
Great, now I need to set up a cold water tank again... although, maybe I could figure out a way to chill it with outside air, hmmm... probably still need a chiller for stability. Just what I need :roll:. My kindergarten students have been begging me to put squid in an empty 55 gallon. What do you think the minimum size requirement would be?

Are they really only 16 mm?
 
They are just itty bitty little guys :smile:

I imagine a tank as small as 6 or 7 gallons would be fine. In Japan instead of a chiller they will take and place an entire all in one tank inside of a wine fridge. I'm likely gonna give this idea a shot with a petco aqueon tank and a cragslist wine fridge.
 
They are just itty bitty little guys :smile:

I imagine a tank as small as 6 or 7 gallons would be fine. In Japan instead of a chiller they will take and place an entire all in one tank inside of a wine fridge. I'm likely gonna give this idea a shot with a petco aqueon tank and a cragslist wine fridge.
Oh, don't tell me that, it makes it possible for me, as long as I could find a live food source... I sooo want to try these little guys...
 
NO, NO, NO ... I am not trying another cold tank! This is SOOOOOOOO tempting! I love the idea of a wine frig ... NO, NO, NO I won't think about this!. CG, YOU HAVE to do this!!!!
 
Already searching Craigslist... live food source is my hurdle right now. How cool would it be for my students? Little worried about the stability of such a small tank, which might mean I need a larger tank to go along with it... Great, I have MTS just with the planning.
 
I dont know if this will stop the planning or make it increase, but Kirt Onthank from Walla Walla university is coming tomorrow to pick up all the pygmy squid :biggrin2: Gave him the whole lot of them for cost on the condition that when he has babies he has to share them with me so we can both keep em going :smile:

All the little buggers (even the tiny males) have been eating thawed out frozen mysis shrimp so that eased my worries a bit on keeping up with the collection of live amphipods (Kirts too I imagine being inland a ways) They also seemed to grab the live tigriopus californicus that I gave them, but that was all too small for me to tell in the holding tank they are in since its a top down view.

So for those of you who had thought about setting up systems for these guys please keep doing so! I will be giving their holding tank a thorough look over when we get ready to transport them tomorrow to see if any of the females have already started depositing eggs anywhere.

My hope is that by getting these guys into the hands of a local cephalopod expert that he and his students can continue to breed them out and make them available to other researchers and universities since they are so prolific.

On a side note, Kirt gets to also see my 30lb GPO and the other 8 juveniles I have in house right now when he comes by :smile:
Here's a pic of the big guy:
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