videos of my baby cuttlefish eating frozen food!

[corpusse]

I haven't posted my cuttlefish log here, mostly because I do not post here that often, but I like how these videos are coming out and cuttlefish is not something you normally see in people's tanks especially in Canada, so I thought you guys might like to check em out.

I started out with 2 clutches of eggs, this is my second time raising sepia bandensis (dwarf cuttlefish).

When first born they only eat live food. They are also only 1/3" making the choices extremely limited. Baby brine shrimp / tigger pods are too small. Live mysids are really the only option. With no one culturing them in Canada, shipping from the US is super expensive.

Anyway these guys are less then 3 weeks old. It's a bit unusual to get them eating frozen this early, but a welcome sign.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZ1MBoDRr3s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZ1MBoDRr3s

Here's one with 2 of them fighting over one mysis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOPPTdweUjU

I'll post some more video clips and photos later.

The adults will eventually be going into a custom 90g softy dominated tank.

[pterfloth]

Thanks for sharing! Would like to hear more about your setup and how you keep them alive.

[phyto4life]

Nice, what color's does he change? all color's and pattern's? is he just like the larger cuttlefish?

what size will he get?

does his pattern flash at all or is that the larger cuttlefish?

[Delphinus]

Neat!!

[corpusse]

Originally Posted by pterfloth

Thanks for sharing! Would like to hear more about your setup and how you keep them alive.

I have approximately 30 babies now, they are housed in my frag tank and temporary 10 gallon tank which I added to the setup for them. They are inside breeders nets which are tiny net boxes that work perfectly for containing up to 5 of them. With a little marco algae to hide in they are good in these nets for the first month or so of life. When they get bigger I will drop it down to 2-3 per net where as now its 4-5. Inside the net its very easy to tell who is eating and they are small enough there is still plenty of room to roam around.







I like using the frag tank as I feel it's very stable and it allows easy access to them. Eventually they will be moved to a 90gallon custom tank.

Originally Posted by phyto4life

Nice, what color's does he change? all color's and pattern's? is he just like the larger cuttlefish?

what size will he get?

does his pattern flash at all or is that the larger cuttlefish?

They change from white to dark brown, patterns change as well as texture. With them being in the white nets they spend most of their time white. However there is red macro algae in some nets so they do change dark brown at times as well.

They will max out at 3-4"



That's the 90 they will be going in. Probably 6-8 adults.

Here is a couple videos of my last adult which recently died

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNV-oOc7NSw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGUGKLX1Ibw


in the second video you see him change colour and texture.

[RedCoralEdmonton]

that is really cool, i recently had 4 cuttlefish eggs, and i raised them up to about a month, and right from when they hatched i fed them only cyclop-eeze, and they did just fine, just an idea if you cant seem to get ahold of live food, i also did the breeder net idea, and had it floating in a 45 gallon reef tank, worked out really well.

Cheers

Steve

[fishoholic]

Very cool video's. On average how long do they live for? I remember hearing that they generally don't live very long.

[corpusse]

Originally Posted by Steve@LittleOceans

that is really cool, i recently had 4 cuttlefish eggs, and i raised them up to about a month, and right from when they hatched i fed them only cyclop-eeze, and they did just fine, just an idea if you cant seem to get ahold of live food, i also did the breeder net idea, and had it floating in a 45 gallon reef tank, worked out really well.

Cheers

Steve

How are they doing now? Cyclopeeze just seems way too small. They are eating mysids 2 or more times longer then them. I tried tigger pods in the past and they were not interested.

Originally Posted by fishoholic

Very cool video's. On average how long do they live for? I remember hearing that they generally don't live very long.

10-14 months, I think 12 months is about average but not sure yet. Their lifespan in captivity is a bit longer because you can jam food in their face when they lose the will to hunt.

If they had a 2-3 year lifespan I'd like them a lot more. I can't see myself keeping them for more then a few years tops. When they're babies they're just so much work. When they are adults they are very neat and a lot easier to take care of. The first few weeks are what's hard and paying overnight shipping for box after box of live mysids!