Sepia officinalis laying eggs

[Ray Caruana]

• This video was shot by chance as I was checking on another aquarium with pipefish which were in full courting ritual. The animal was donated a week before to the Fisheries Research Centre where I work as an Aquaculture (education) officer in charge of a small number of marine aquaria and ponds. Hope you enjoy!

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• LINK

 

[DWhatley]

Sepia officinalis laying eggs

Welcome Ray! Loving your videos!
Is that a particularly small officinalis - or - is the lack of reference making her looks small - or - do they survive multiple egg layings?

 

[Ray Caruana]

Sepia officinalis laying eggs

Thanks dwhatley. It's the average size for Malta, about 160mm ML. The bigger ones as generally fished offshore. This one was captured by a little boy in a rockpool area.
I always thought and heared that they die shortly after they deposit the eggs, but this one has already laid three clutches in a week and still looks healthy and active. I feed it live shore crabs and prawns.
BTW, I see that we share another interest...seahorses. I bred the H.Reidi sometime ago and got a permit to keep and breed the H.guttalatus and H.hippocampus later this year. But, this is a cephalopod site

 

[DWhatley]

Ray,

You seem to have the perfect job

There are a couple of other members that have enjoyed seahorses as well as mantis shrimp. We allow ourselves to mention them every so often if we can manage a proper context . I no longer keep seahorses though as I find more enjoyment for the amount of work with the octopuses and have slowly converted all my larger tanks (except the softy reef) into octo safe environments (mostly hardware changes since the horses were kept in species only tanks with very limited corals). Losing my oldest and favorite female Erectus to Vibro after three years probably had an impact too. I just could not euthanize her and kept hoping it was something more curable.

 

[octopi88]

nice vid

 

[Ray Caruana]

The female died last Sunday shortly after laying another two clutches of eggs. She measured 120mm ML. I now have 5 bunches of inked eggs in 5 seperate aquaria which I'm following closely. The 80 litres glass tanks have an open filtration system with a flow rate of 1 litre per minute. The temperature is currently 21.5 celsius and the photoperiod 12L/12D.