S.Bandensis Cuttlefish - Just released the kids into main tank

[Almondsaz]

Hopefully that means that you will soon have an egg cave. Exciting news....hope you get the camera from the car and can document the event when it happens next.

 

[snowmaker]

What is the age of your cuttlefish at this point?
I was excited to see mating starting a week or 2 ago. Have not found any eggs yet.
I am still looking for info regarding a time frame from mating to egg laying, and from egg laying to hatch.

 

[MAKOOKAM]

They are about 3.5 months old. I think I'm going to have to get rid of or move my second male to another tank. He's really not enjoying the attention of the dominant male. I'm also trying to find info on when the female will start laying from time of mating. I'm seeing 2 weeks to a month for hatch times from Paradox's site - http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2008-10/feature/index.php

The problem I'm going to run into is that the female's cave where she stays is fairly deep and I cant see her most of the time even if I really want to. I have to dangle food at the entrance to get her to come out. I'm thinking the chances of seeing the eggs are going to be fairly slim if she lays in there.

 

[Thales]

Its hard to tell when they will start laying from mating, as they can mate for a while before they start to lay.

No worries about seeing the eggs - she will most likely lay a lot of them.

 

[Almondsaz]

You know you have to take pictures when she starts to lay eggs....so no excuses like "my camera was out in the car" This is really exciting stuff, hopefully you will keep a journal of the date mating started until the eggs were laid - showed as fertile and hatched. Great stuff. We are all watching your incredible progress.

 

[MAKOOKAM]

Well I finally got a nikon d90 and shot a quick vid of my now segregated male showing color and texture change. I shot it a t a very high ISO so forgive the grainy look. I should have a macro lens this week and look forward to shooting some good stuff...in the mean time heres the vid.

 

[DWhatley]

Well I finally got a nikon d90 ... I should have a macro lens this week

and once again, one hobby spawns the necessity of another

Love the video and I would not want to meet him in situ if he was the size he appears when your finger does not give size reference. He reminded me of a tiger

 

[MAKOOKAM]

Indeed. It's funny that I can justify spending another 400 dollars on top of the cost of the d90 just so i can get better shots of my cuttles.

 

[L8 2 RISE]

Do you have a comparitive shot of how big your cuttles are? like with a quarter or something? I'm worried that mine are too small and maybe I haven't been feeding enough. They're right around 2 months old now, but still in the net breeder because they're probably only .5-.75 inches long

 

[MAKOOKAM]

hot off the presses for ya L8 2 RISE...

 

[CaptFish]

Nice!

 

[Almondsaz]

Great video....

 

[MAKOOKAM]

sucks that there is no autofocus while recording...just have to learn to work with it.

 

[MAKOOKAM]

Same male just grabbed the feeding tongs while feeding and refused to release...

 

[corpusse]

How's the hand feeding going in general? My guys are giving me a tough time. One day they almost all take pieces of shrimp. The next day they want no part in it. So I don't feed them for a day and give it another go and most are disinterested again today. I will give it one more go later before I give in and give them live shrimp, but I'd like to get them regularly accepting frozen shrimp before they get released.

I am also going to try the fishing line approach once I break down and look in the garage for some line.