Northern Pygmy Squid (Idiosepius paradoxus)

[cuttlegirl]

Oh... good to hear... I am on the lookout for a tank right now, want to get a population of live food established before I think about the squid, but I am really interested. How often are you feeding them daily?

Also, are you actually keeping them in a wine fridge, or are you chilling another way?

 

[AquaticEngineer]

I cast feed them 2 times a day for a minute or two just slowly puting mysis in. Chilling them off of a 600 gallon system with a 3/4hp chiller and a 1/2 horse back up. They in a large critter keeper inside of that system. Right now its hanging around 54 degrees with no chillers running.

 

[Mot Reyd]

Your killing me with the photos of that GPO man

 

[DWhatley]

@Taollan (Kirt Onthank), this means you HAVE to post SOMETHING about what you are doing in your new lab with the squid

 

[AquaticEngineer]

Kirt may or may not be getting a GPO baby for his lab as well tomorrow, I told him if he has room for one its his

 

[DWhatley]

LOL, I started to ask about that

 

[Nemcrazy]

Any news?

 

[AquaticEngineer]

Any news?

Last I heard Kirt still had them alive. I just sent a big bag full of sitka shrimp and a big culture of pods back with one of his TA's that was in Portland.

I also forwarded him all the contact information for the collector in Japan that got them for us, that way if we has the funding to bring in more he can go direct to the source Last time I checked their list they had 37 of them in stock.

 

[Taollan]

Sorry it has taken me so long to update on what is going on with the pygmy squid! It has been a super busy quarter teaching, so I haven't had much spare time lately. I have a several undergraduate students that are working with them to do some basic measurements of metabolic rate and activity schedules. Unfortunately I don't think I will have enough to get a breeding colony started with this batch, but at some point I am going to attempt to get some (a lot) more from Japan and really try in earnest to get a breeding colony going here at my lab. Here are a couple pictures of the little guys:

 

[cuttlegirl]

What is the size of the system? What is the temperature? What are they eating?

 

[Taollan]

I have them in a Marineland ML-24 110 gallon tank, each squid sub-partitioned into its own critter-keeper type enclosure. Temp is sitting at 10C. I am feeding them live amphipods from Stu at Coldwater Marine Aquatics and live shore shrimp I ordered in from Sachs Systems Aquaculture in Florida. I tried to get them going on frozen mysids at first, but they would never feed on them more than once or twice before refusing to take them anymore.

 

[DWhatley]

Testing link with FB video

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=4050125187057

 

[DarkwingedDuck]

I know I'm bumping up an old thread...but was there ever any success in rearing the offspring of these guys? I am working with a type of pygmy squid (Idiosepius pygmaeus). They are a tropical species, but I imagine that if you can rear I. paradoxus, you can also rear I. pygmaeus. I caught about 80 of them last year and they would readily mate and lay eggs...but never any luck in getting them to hatch. I'm hoping to do some transgenerational work with them this year, so any tips on rearing them would be greatly appreciated.

 

[skywindsurfer]

I realize this is probably a dead thread, seeing as the last post was about two years ago, but I just found out about these guys while looking up caulerpa. What ever came of these endeavors?

 

[DarkwingedDuck]

still working on it believe it or not. can get hatchlings to survive up to 6 days and have on rare occasion observed hatched individuals feeding. but not much hope at the moment....putting most of my effort into other research at the moment