Anyone with Cuddlefish experiences

[laversace]

Here are some pics of my now almost 1 inch cuttles. The first pic is of a pair fighting over a mysid shrimp, which means it's time for larger accommodations. The second pic is of another cuttle that is feeding on a much larger ghost shrimp. You can see how much the tentacles stretch over the prey. The third pic is another cuttle that is feeding on a half inch amphipod I found in the sump.

Which means they must be constantly fed in order to develop properly.

 

[Jeremy S.]

I've heard to not feed the Cuttles ghost shrimp. Do they have any nutritional value or can they be used to fed cuttles?

 

[laversace]

The primary food source has been live Mysis but on occasions I do vary their diet to some ghost shrimps and amphipods that I can collect from my sump. The one food source I would advise against is the freshwater live food such as baby guppies and goldfishes. From the first brood, I fed a baby guppy to one of my largest cuttle and he suddenly stopped eating in two days and died (inexplicably at that time). I have since read that they most likely contain copper which unfortunately I found out the hard way.

 

[Jeremy S.]

The primary food source has been live Mysis but on occasions I do vary their diet to some ghost shrimps and amphipods that I can collect from my sump. The one food source I would advise against is the freshwater live food such as baby guppies and goldfishes. From the first brood, I fed a baby guppy to one of my largest cuttle and he suddenly stopped eating in two days and died (inexplicably at that time). I have since read that they most likely contain copper which unfortunately I found out the hard way.

I try to avoid live feeder fish no matter what I'm feeding lol. I use to feed live guppies to some things, but they were grown in one of my own tanks so I was sure no chemicals had been used on them.

What kind of time are you looking at from eggs being laid to the eggs hatching on average?

Like I said earlier I've seen where the eggs can just be left in a net breeder box to hatch, but would there be any benefit to hatching the eggs in a kresiel tank?

 

[Volitans67]

Great comments guys! Now I have to try and convince my wife I need a ceph tank too

 

[laversace]

My first brood hatched about a little over a month after they were laid. Once the female stopped laying the eggs I relocated them to my medium flow floating breeder cage so I can monitor the eggs' development. The hatch rate was approximately 90%. The egg clusters were naturally laid and attached under some cave overhang with low to medium water movement. I believe the floating cage adequately simulated this natural water movement. I situated a low flow power head nearby and adjusted it to provide the desired flow over the eggs. As far as I understand, a Kreisel tank might have excessive circulating water movement for the eggs to develop properly.

 

[Jeremy S.]

My first brood hatched about a little over a month after they were laid. Once the female stopped laying the eggs I relocated them to my medium flow floating breeder cage so I can monitor the eggs' development. The hatch rate was approximately 90%. The egg clusters were naturally laid and attached under some cave overhang with low to medium water movement. I believe the floating cage adequately simulated this natural water movement. I situated a low flow power head nearby and adjusted it to provide the desired flow over the eggs. As far as I understand, a Kreisel tank might have excessive circulating water movement for the eggs to develop properly.

Yea from everything I've read it seems that a net breeder box is going to be the way to go in hatching and raising the eggs.

You guys have been a great help so far.

Now to just setup everything to culture phytoplankton, artemia, and mysids....

 

[laversace]

Good luck with the culture set up. I would be interested how that turns out for you.

 

[laversace]

Based on common practice using garlic as an attractant for difficult feeders, such as mandarin gobies, seashores, and pipefishes, a live food feeding session was replaced with frozen mysis that were dipped in garlic for 5 minutes. Unfortunately, my attempt at increasing the feeding response of the cuttles to frozen mysis was rejected. The cuttles preferred the non-dipped version much better. Only 2 cuttles had a positive response to the garlic version.

 

[Jeremy S.]

Based on common practice using garlic as an attractant for difficult feeders, such as mandarin gobies, seashores, and pipefishes, a live food feeding session was replaced with frozen mysis that were dipped in garlic for 5 minutes. Unfortunately, my attempt at increasing the feeding response of the cuttles to frozen mysis was rejected. The cuttles preferred the non-dipped version much better. Only 2 cuttles had a positive response to the garlic version.

I was actually thinking about trying to use garlic to get a feeding response. Your input has been very much appreciated and extremely helpful. I'm working on finding a good place to setup everything for culturing the food right now, then I'll be on to setting up and cycling the breeding tanks.

What kind of supplements is everyones opinion for feeding the artemia and Mysids? From what I've read I'm more than likely going to be using Selcon, but what other supplements have been successfully used?

 

[rcmike]

I really wouldn't try feeding artemia. From what I've read they don't do well on them. With the mysis I just fed them some ground up flake food. From what I read they are pretty difficult to culture because they start eating the young ones. Right now I'm feeding mostly amphipods and that seems to be working pretty well. I got some ghost shrimp the other day and they will eat the smaller ones but the larger ones are still too big for them. Wish I could find a food source in between amphipods and larger shrimp.

 

[Jeremy S.]

I really wouldn't try feeding artemia. From what I've read they don't do well on them. With the mysis I just fed them some ground up flake food. From what I read they are pretty difficult to culture because they start eating the young ones. Right now I'm feeding mostly amphipods and that seems to be working pretty well. I got some ghost shrimp the other day and they will eat the smaller ones but the larger ones are still too big for them. Wish I could find a food source in between amphipods and larger shrimp.

I was talking about supplementing the artemia to feed to the mysid. From what I've read the mysids will eat freshly hatched artemia up to 30 hours old. I would have to wait for 24 hours after the artemia hatched for their yolk to be completely depleted, then as soon as they start eating feed them some form of supplemented food. And once they have ate, but before they are 30 hours old feed them to the mysids while they are still small enough.

To me it seems like feeding them a live supplemented food would cut down on the cannabalism by giving them another live food source to keep them occupied.

 

[rcmike]

Ah, I see. I misunderstood you.

I cleaned out the small critter keeper that my cuttles are in. I had sand in it and it was getting nasty so I decided to go bare bottom with it instead. I have a small pump pumping water into it and I have an overflow pipe through the side. It has been working well so far. I may try to get some pictures if I get time later on.

 

[Jeremy S.]

Ah, I see. I misunderstood you.

I cleaned out the small critter keeper that my cuttles are in. I had sand in it and it was getting nasty so I decided to go bare bottom with it instead. I have a small pump pumping water into it and I have an overflow pipe through the side. It has been working well so far. I may try to get some pictures if I get time later on.

I'm very interested to see this. I'm thinking my main tank for the first set will probably be a divided 40 gallon breeder.

 

[laversace]

Another trend I observed was that the cuttles had more active feeding responses when the illumination were set to simulate dusk/dawn lighting. They tended to snap at the frozen mysis more often when the illumination was adjusted to low output with only the blue light spectrum on. Using this method has reduced the amount of time it took to switch the cuttles to frozen mysis. Another observation was that the cuttles tended to feed on whole mysis and not fragmented ones. The cuttles appeared to recognize and prefer to feed on mysis with intact heads and bodies.

RCmike, what is your source for amphipods?

 

[rcmike]

I have all four of mine eating ghost shrimp as well as the amphipods now. I have really seen a lot of growth since giving them ghost shrimp. It seems like every time I take the camera down to the basement where my tanks are the cuttles are shy and don't want their picture taken. When I forget the camera they come right out and eat right in front of me.

 

[rcmike]

I went to take a couple of pictures today and when I was walking up to the tanks I noticed one of the cuttles darting around inking all over the place. Not sure why exactly. Here are a couple of pictures of the setup and all of the ink he spewed out. It dissipated in a few minutes. I have a small pump pumping water through the yellow line and the white is the overflow. I have a strainer from a maxi jet glued over the overflow to prevent the cuttles from going over it. They weren't being very photogenic today but I got a picture of a couple looking out of the conch shell I put in there. Not sure why the first one is sideways.

 

[Jeremy S.]

I like that setup, that's actually kind of what I was considering, but I wasnt sure how exatly to pull it off. This thread has been extremely helpful once again. The picture of them in the shell is awesome.

Have you figured out the reason the one started inking?

 

[laversace]

Those are awesome pics. I really like the set up you have there, which definitely gives me some ideas. I can't judge from the shrimps in the pics but how old are your cuttles? Thanks.

 

[rcmike]

I have no idea why he went berserk and inked all over the place. Maybe I startled him or something.

I have had them 7 weeks and they were pretty much newborns when I ordered them. The shrimp were a little big for them and they didn't eat them. They will only eat the smaller ghost shrimp most of the time.