• 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.

Cuttlefish ink and beak

squishy1;190466 said:
How would you go about cleaning the breeder nets the eggs/baby cuttles are in? The only way I've found to really clean the nets is by taking them out and taking the hose to it at high pressure, even then it can take a few rinses before I get all of the gunk off the net. I may have the issue of them clogging quicker and heavier due to the lack of a protein skimmer on my system. As much as I'd love to drop the money on a protein skimmer, at this point in time I think a generator is a much much smarter investment. The power outage we had last year cost me 3 breeding pairs of fish and all of my zooplankton cultures.

My nets never got all that gunky - even after a few months. If you keep them out of the light, or cover them, it will help. I don't think that a skimmer is something that you should bypass of a ceph tank.
 
Water changes also remove those things. I also have a lot of macro algae and a few mangroves to help keep the nutrient level down. But weekly water changes on such a small tank aren't a big deal. They'll be in a much larger tank in a month with all the proper equipment. With rolling blackout season quickly approaching the generator appears to be the much smarter choice for long term survival of these guys. You can't really run a protein skimmer without power, and we seem to lose power here at least once a year. I have 9 tanks currently running.

On a side note, some of the babies ate their first ghost shrimp yesterday (very small ones). One of them even managed to take down a cherry shrimp twice his size. But for some reason I can't get them to eat any crabs. I was able to locate some really small ones at the beach, but the cuttles show no interest in them.
 
A skimmer isn't only for export, it also is great at oxygenating the water, and in the mid run is much cheaper than water changes. You don't need an expensive skimmer either, they all are with about 8 percent of the same 'efficacy'. That said, please don't think I am telling you what to do...there are a million ways to skin a reef.
 
It appears I made the right call investing in a generator before a protein skimmer. Last night we lost power at 7PM and it didn't come back on until 4am. I was really hoping to have done a dry run with the generator before i actually needed it, but sh!t happens.

I don't how, but I managed to forget to plug in the heater from my display tank into the generator so the temperature plummeted down to 74 degrees by the time the power came back on. I just released my 3 month old cuttle into the display 2 weeks and haven't yet seen him this morning. So is it possible that the temperature drop to 74 stressed or killed him? I had a heater malfunction on my smaller tank with the 20 baby cuttles 2 weeks ago that got the water up to 84 degrees with only 1 casualty so I'm thinking temperature isn't as big of a killer as flow, or lack of, would be. The only reason I'm worried is the water looks cloudy this morning, like something died and is polluting the water.
 
I think it's possible the cuttle survived. 74 isn't HUGE from where it is supposed to be. The dwarf cuttles prefer temp around 78-79, so I think a gradual decline to 74, and then a gradual incline to 79 shouldn't be too stressful. I'm just trying to think positively. Hopefully Thales or CuttleGirl will chime in.
What are your current tank parameters?
 
Generally any temperature swings over 2 degrees cause a lot of stress on livestock, especially when the temperature swing is over the course of just a few hours. But it looks like whatever it is causing the water to cloud isn't the cuttle, i just saw him moving around a few minutes ago. My lights are just starting to turn on now, and I'm noticing a lot of polyp extension on all my montipora's so I think I'm ok.

I'm not sure on all the tank parameters, i did a huge water change before adding the cuttle, and have been dosing magnesium, calcium, and alkalinity pretty heavy to get the numbers where they should be. Instant Ocean Reef crystals generally needs supplementation still to get those parameters where they should be for a reef. Planning on doing complete testing on my frag and cuttle tanks either today or tomorrow to see where I'm at.
 
The eggs were delivered on June 7th and if I recall correctly the first ones started to hatch on June 22nd which makes most of them about 6 1/2 weeks old. For some reason I keep thinking they're older, more like 8 or 9 weeks old. The older one from my second batch of eggs is about 13 weeks old.
 
the cuttle in that video was about 6 weeks old at the time of recording. its hard to keep track of age when you have different batches of eggs hatching at different times. im not sure how old they are currently, but its only a few more weeks until they reach sexual maturity and start laying eggs ( i hope!). Here's some more videos from the past 2 weeks.
 

Shop Amazon

Shop Amazon
Shop Amazon; support TONMO!
Shop Amazon
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon and affiliated sites.
Back
Top