[Cuttlefish Eggs]: Cuttle Farm Army's newest Recruits! 7 Bandensis!

Heres an update. The adults are doing great in the main display. Eggs began appearing on February 24th. The first hatchling appeared on March 29th. I now have 8 hatchlings and probably 30 eggs that look ripe. So maybe a total of 40 will be hatching from 100 or so eggs.

I currently have more eggs laid in the main tank that I have not removed yet. Maybe 60 or so.

Studies have shown cephs reproductive success and egg viability to be dismally low in captivity with percentages at around 10%. It is difficult to determine what affects this without having multiple seperate tanks with different conditions. For a month, I kept a mated pair in the juvenile section of my tank to try and document its breeding and egg laying. Most of the eggs from this pair were not viable. At the same time, a female that was mated with an older male (from a different source of eggs then the others) seemed to have much better success. However, I cannot contribute this success to this or the different conditions in the main tank. They share the same water, but differ in flow, rock structure and lighting

At present, all adult bandensis are in the main display. 6 adults. I can see cluster of eggs that seem all bad and another cluster of eggs next to it that look all to be good. I cannot discern between if they were laid by the same female or by seperate ones.

Water parameters:
-Nitrate 0
-Phosphate 0
-CA 460
-Alk 11 DKH
-Salinity 1.026
-Temp 76-78
-Mg 1260

-Flow: High- 2 vortechs on reefcrest -synched
-Lighting: 3x 250 watt SE Halide + 4x36watt T5
T5s on 9:30Am-8:00PM
1x250 Watt SE halide on 2:30pm-8:30pm
2x250 Watt SE halide on 3:30pm-11:30pm


I will have hatchlings for sale soon. These are captive bred and are 2nd generation. I will like for anyone interested in purchasing them to update thier experiences on Tonmo so we can track lineage as well as add to our knowledge of successfully breeding them.
 
So today I removed a cluster of eggs from the main display and later saw one of the females starting to lay eggs in this same spot! Ive only had the chance to see this occur once and by the time I ran to grab the camera, she was done. This time I was lucky enough to get a short video! I had to grab a clamp light since it was in a cave, so the lighting is pretty yellow. Before she began to attach the egg, I saw some black fluid being excreted from her siphon.

Heres a quick video of it...



It seemed to take her about 8 minutes to lay the egg into her tentacles. I attempted to video the whole process prior to her attaching the egg, but of course the cameras battery ran out! During the 8 minutes, shes just hovering with her tentacles in a position where it looks like shes trying to get an egg out. I have a video of this, but its pretty boring. Ill upload it if anyone is interested.
 
Awesome video, Paradox! :notworth:

Probably not too many people have ever seen that before. I wonder if some of the ink might get squeezed out of the mother while she's laying eggs just because she's trying to squeeze big eggs out of a small opening and it squeezes the ink sac in the process.

Does anyone know of any references that discuss/show how cuttles lay eggs? Would be curious where the various bits and pieces are kept and how they make and get the eggs to stick to a stalk. Seems like it would be a pretty tight squeeze to get all those eggs inside my tiny female Bandensis...

= B =
 
eres a few cuttle pics taken by Eric Do, a member of BAR, our local reef club.

Cuttles gone Wild
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Feeding Tentacles! (Funny how eric was able to capture this so easily when out of 1000s of pictures I think I only got 1-2 shots of this) This guy is over a year old now!
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Heres a few coral shots. As you can see, Im still at the frag size stage for SPS. Im trying very hard to keep the open look, so Ive only added a few. I cant wait until they grow out! Again, these were taken by Eric.

Zoo mound
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Im making an acan tower. (One thing about LPS I dont like is that most people have them grow to look like a mound. Shape means a lot to me aesthetically, so I made a spire and am placing acan frags on it to hopefully grow a acan tower. This is just the tip of it.
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Red with green base acro. This one will be nice all grown up!
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Full tank shot
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Maxima
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Unknown acro I grew out of a brown nub. Its getting a nice royal blue
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Here are a few new pics I took with my crappy camera.

As mentioned earlier, Im trying to make more creative shapes for LPS, since 'mounds' annoy me. Here is a claw I made out of branch Rock. I hope to cover it with this war coral. To the right of the pic, you can see the top of my watermelon chalice spire.
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Just starting to spread out.
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Balancing Act
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Babies In Zoos
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More male aggressive Display. Notice the bite mark on the top guys head.
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Small Update...

I often have random free floating eggs in the tank and if they are easy to remove and Im not lazy, I will get a hose and siphon them out. Ive found this to be the easiest way to remove eggs and babies.

I found a rnadom egg yesterday on a rock with a baby that looked fully developed!

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Im pretty sure now that I must have some eggs that may have hatched in the main tank. Im really curious to know if they will survive off of the random copepod or small mysid population I have in the system.

Here are some pictures of newly removed eggs. Some you can cleary see the unborn hatchlings with a large heart shaped yolk sack.

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The eggs are so fragile, that its almost impossible to not cause early release of the babies when handling them. Hopefully this guy may survive.

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Ive also tried making a small cave out of a planting pot in hopes the cuttles will choose it for a den and lay their eggs in it. This would make egg removal much easier. This one looks pretty ghetto, but will go behind my rockwork and out of site. If they start using it, Ill probably start making ones that actually look nice and implement them into the system.

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Im also working on a live mysid setup. I have access to local frehwater mysids, but have trouble keeping a large amount alive. Granted Im keeping them in a 5 gallon bucket with just a bubbler, but Im avoiding setting up a whole other system to keep them. So using items I already have here, Im connecting a drain tube to the 5 gallon bucket. The drain tube will be 25% down the top of the bucket, so it will not drain more then 25% water volume. The tube is connected to a solenoid connected to a timer to open the drain 15 minutes per day. I then will be adding a tube from my rodi to a float valve to the top of the bucket. This should cause a 25% automatic water change everyday and hopefully allow me to keep a high density of mysis alive in the bucket.

Ill posts some pics of this after its all completed.
 

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