Sepia Bandensis For Sale!!

[Kerrick]

Terrible joke. Sorry! Actually I doubt they would take Bandensis. Now if you were selling Sepia Officinalis...

 

[Mike Bauer]

All can you keep the 4 of them in a 55 gal tank with mostly live sand and a few live rocks or would that be to small?

 

[Reef Geek]

I think 55g may be ok for size. I'd be more concerned with water parameters, filtration, skimmer and that sort of thing. Basically you need a good established reef tank environment to keep cuttles. A good skimmer and clean-up crew are essential in my experience.

As always, bigger is better.

 

[Reef Geek]

Any luck re-homing these guys yet?

 

[Thales]

At that size, use a big bag (at least a 12" for each animal) and absolutely use O2. $50 for a captive raised S. bandensis is a steal.

 

[Cephdoc]

No no luck yet and they need to go asap. 50 a piece unless another deal is struck between me and someone really interested and has the money.PM if interested

 

[Thales]

Really sad that you cant sell them. Its odd that people seem willing to shell out tons of money on eggs and live mysis, or 150 bucks for a wild caught octopus, but not a reasonable amount of money on a captive raised animal.

 

[DWhatley]

Rich,
You also have to take into consideration the cost of shipping. Commercial entities can charge far less than individuals so even though $50 is an excellent price, after $75 - $100 shipping it becomes a pricey potential immediate total loss if the animals don't survive. I think the only way captive bred will work for anything but local clubs is for people like Live Aquaria to get involved.

 

[Thales]

So the animal cost 150 delivered to your door. No shipments of mysis needed. No guess work about eggs being duds. No worries about getting enough food to hatchlings. No having to get rid of extra hatchlings. Seems worth the risk to me.

I have talked with LA about supplying them S. bandensis and the price would prolly be somewhere between 150 and 200 plus shipping.

I think the only way captive breeding is going to work, or that we are going to be able to keep importing wild animals (ignoring the deaths that come before the one for sale is offered) is to pay what the animals both wild and captive are actually worth, not what the current 'economy of scale' allows them to be sold cheaply for.

What I really don't undersand is the idea that keeping saltwater animals should be cheap. It is not an inexpensive hobby and it always seems weird to me when people seem to expect the animals to be the most inexpensive part.

Cuttles are a prime candiate for captive breeding and it makes me sad that we cant really do it because people aren't willing to pay what it costs to actually raise these animals.

Sorry if that sounds ranty...blame it on the jet lag.

 

[DWhatley]

I think cephs fall outside a normal discussion on keeping and caring for a saltwater aquarium simply because of the lifespan. If you pay $50 - $200 for a coral, you expect it to live as long as you keep the tank and several years if you buy a fish (I know this is often not the case but the expectation is there as well as the potential). IMO, if we could nail down successful at home breeding of bandensis so that one purchase would allow for perpetuation, the willingness to spend money on the original animals would increase. As it is now, buying an animal that is fully eating frozen foods means it will only survive roughly 6 months where trying to raise hatchlings doubles the time with the animal even if it doubles the cost.

 

[Thales]

Sadly, almost all MO life is considered 'disposable' by most hobbyists, regardless of its lifespan. I attribute this to mostly the price of the animals due to the economy of scale (shudder) and the prevailing attitude that killing animals is just part of the hobby. Sure there are some out there that pride themselves on how long they can keep something alive, but they are few and far between. Apparently, the tenure for people in the hobby is generally 2 years, so we aren't talking about people who keep animals long term. Expensive corals are even worse, as people will routinely spend hundreds of dollars on tiny fragments over and over again until they get one that 'sticks' or until something more sexy comes along or until they cannot get another fragment. Sadly, the 'cut flower' mentality is alive and well regardless of price. This is not to say that some people and groups are really trying to change that, but it is an uphill battle. Maybe you are right about the potential lifespan, but I see hobbyists shelling out money week after week, month after month, for fish and inverts. And lets not forget about the horrible 'bag lot sales' that still occur with shocking frequency - some people would rather spend 40 dollars 5 times to get an animal that lives than spending 90 dollars once to get a healthy animal from a reputable vendor in the first place. Perceived cost is crazy town.

When I, and then Daniel and I, were breeding S. bandens regularly at home, we had problems selling the animals for simply what it cost to raise them, never mind any compensation for time. And this was for 2 and 3 month old animals. Maybe more people would be into them now, but I have the feeling that most would still balk at the reality price. People just don't seem to want to spend the money on short lived animals - when it really seems that because they are short lived they should cost more due to all the problems getting and raising them. I could raise S. bandensis at home, but I just don't think the market is there to make it worth the time investment. I think raising from eggs more than doubles the cost, but am too tired to run the math properly.

We do know how to raise S. bandensis, its just that no one is willing to do it on any scale because of the time, cost and space it takes. When I say cost, its really food. Its not about knowledge IMO, its about cost, which brings us full circle. People are willing to spend $120.00 plus shipping on wild cephs, but not $50 plus shipping on captive reared animals because of some perceived cost benefit, and I find that very odd. A wild animal is a gamble, a captive raised one is less of a gamble, or at the very least a more understood gamble.

And, more importantly, as a community that has an ethical stance, shouldn't we be getting behind captive breeding where ever we can regardless of the cost? Does it really make sense to coax new to saltwater ceph hobbyists on how to keep difficult wild caught animals or through the difficulties of raising cuttles from eggs in a salt water system? The results are often dismal - saltwater is not easy, never mind saltwater cephs. Or does it make more sense to direct them to somewhat more expensive, but significantly easier to keep captive raised animals?

Thanks for reading!

 

[Kerrick]

I'm sorry to hear that you are having trouble Cephdoc!

To chime in on the debate, I think that he may be having trouble with the interest in his area. I have allready found several people in my area that are willing to pay a price of $80 or more per cuttle when I can sex them. This was done by talking to a lot of LFS owners and letting the community know I had them.

Most everyone I talked to in the hobby were really interested at first, but because they had heard Cephs were so hard to keep, thought that I would not have any survive. This is slowly changing as I update them every couple of weeks. I also started threads about this experience on local Reef websites which allows people to keep up with my progress.

All this being said. I think that there is deffinetly a market in my area for captive raised... Making it a profitable business would require being able to raise mysis and having the help of several LFS owners to help get them to the right customers.

 

[Thales]

Thanks Kerrick, please let us know how it goes.

 

[Reef Geek]

Replied to your PM Cephdoc.

For me if it were a local pick-up I wouldn't have trouble paying more. I fully understand the costs involved in raising cuttles from eggs, although I'm a bit spoiled where I live and can generally find live foods for free.

I'm more concerned with the shipping risks since I've not seen very much success with shipping adult cephs. If these guys were anywhere in Florida I'd gladly drive several hours to go pick them up just to mitigate the risk with shipping.

Hopefully we can adhere to Thales shipping guidelines and make this work.

 

[Kerrick]

Please let us know how it turns out. If you get them you are required to start a journal ReefGeek!