• Looking to buy a cephalopod? Check out Tomh's Cephs Forum, and this post in particular shares important info about our policies as it relates to responsible ceph-keeping.

squid tank

Nocturnal cephalopods (or at least O. mercatoris) don't appear to see red wavelengths very well and therefore will think it is essentially "dark" and go about their business as usual when no lights are on in the room and you only have a red light in the tank. This allows you to see them quite well as they go through their normal nocturnal activities anywhere in the tank instead of the inconvenience of using a red flashlight and having to hold and point. It would be even less convenient if you had to shine a white flashlight around the tank at night and ended up scaring them back into hiding.

Here's an example of our merc tank:

 
We also use red lighting when we do night openings at the aquarium. We keep all the main lights off and visitors use torches covered in red cellophane, works a treat and adds to the excitement for the kids!

j
 
New Zealand Marine Studies Centre and Westpac Aquarium at Portobello, Dunedin NZ. 'tis owned by the Marine Science Dept, University of Otago and is the oldest public aquarium in the country (opened in 1931).

see www.marine.ac.nz if you're ever down our way let me know and I'll give you a tour. We also have the Portobello Marine Laboratory on site (oldest in Australasia opened 1904) http://www.otago.ac.nz/marinescience/pml/index.html and access to the RV Polaris II, http://www.otago.ac.nz/marinescience/vessel/index.html

J
 
Squids need a cylindrical tank and to be fed food several times a day, and there is not much hope to getting them to take frozen. Soft sand and little rockwork (but enough so they have somewhere to hide) is also helpful.

Fish (and coral and all sea life) cannot see red spectrum light well because there is virtually none of it in the ocean. The red light that makes it into the water becomes diffused extremely quickly, so after several meters all the red has disappeared. The same diffusion is the reason that deepwater corals do better with blue spectrum lighting. As the water overhead becomes deeper, the yellow and oranges are diffused and blue is almost the only color light you will find.
 

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