Ceph =’s learn things the hard way!
While I’ve published several papers using captive squid data, I’ve not raised squid from eggs. Others have, that work was going on at the NRCC while I was there. My ceph aquaculture claim to fame is being the first to breed and raise deep-sea octopuses in captivity. They were challenging but the issues were different than for squid.
While keeping squid – and deep-sea octopuses for that matter – is logistically challenging, I and others like Richard Ross started out as hobbyists – just like many TONMO members. For this reason I try to encourage hobbyists and try to make my work available online. However, I also do not recommend keeping squid. My intent here is to paint a realistic picture of what worked for me and the level of difficulty so that you can make an informed decision.
Like Jean, I was also using large tanks in a flow through system. "Large" means hot tub to swimming pool sized.
Many of my papers are already available on The Cephalopod Page, specifically here:
Dr. James Wood's Curriculum Vitae
While there are some good tips on keeping cephalopods in captivity in some of the papers, especially the first VIE tagging paper, the scientific paper format doesn’t lend itself to including lots of animal care tips. A lot of what I’ve learned was through trial and error. Popular articles, TONMO posts and mentoring seem to be better vehicles for transferring “how to” animal care knowledge. In the future, videos could help improve knowledge transfer.
Dr. Roland Anderson and I will be publishing a low level paper on keeping squid in captivity. It basically says that squid are difficult. . . which is a common theme here also.