I'VE GOT INKLETS

[Jon Crossan]

HELP!!! i just found 3 little inklets!!!!! charley is a charlotte and I'm freaking out because i dont have anything to feed these little guys and have no experience taking care of inklets im gonna need all the help i can get from you guys!

 

[cuttlegirl]

Ok, are you anywhere near the ocean? You could do plankton tows. You could try Cyclopeeze, tiggerpods or some other form of live plankton. Are the little ones swimming around or hanging out on the bottom?

How big are they?

 

[Animal Mother]

Wow! Good luck with them!

 

[Jon Crossan]

they are about the size of a tick and I'm in Tennessee so theres no chance of getting anything from the ocean. At work the only live food i'd be able to get for them would be brine shrimp would those be ok? They are currently all in seperate containers and they are all hanging out on the walls of the containers i have them in. I need to know EVERYTHING you can tell me about taking care of them. There are amphipods in my tank so i dont know if they've been eating those or not. I litterally just found them ten minutes ago so i have no idea how long they've been in the tank.

 

[Jon Crossan]

Also there are a lot of options for food that i could give them but it's all frozen. Is frozen food an okay thing to give them?

 

[cuttlegirl]

Brine shrimp are not usually a good choice for cephalopods. Maybe newly hatched, since they are higher in nutritional value. Maybe they would be better off free in your tank, hunting for whatever they can find in your live rock. You could release one or two and leave one in a container. Could they get sucked into your outflow?
If you only have frozen, I would suggest Cyclopeeze or letting them free to find whatever they can in your live rock.

 

[gholland]

Jon,

I would suggest you order live mysid shrimp first thing tomorrow morning from someone like Sachs. Have them overnighted. Brine shrimp just aren't very nutritious. Get live "tigger pods" or something similar from your LFS if they have them. The babies should eat amphipods so that is a plus... if you have access to any other well-established reef tanks, raid the filters for more pods. Ordering these types of live foods will get expensive in a hurry, so just be aware.

Once you have a chance, your might want to read through our journal on Varys' babies or dwhatley's journals on Trapper and her babies (and theirs).

Good luck! (And get us some photos as soon as you catch your breath )

 

[DWhatley]

For the immediate, I would recommend getting your hands on some frozen Cyclop-eeze (NOT the dried). Failing this, you should be able to find some Zooplex (bottled dead zoo plankton by Kent) and hopefully you can raid your filter for pods and/or place a piece of LR in their containers. Brine shrimp less than 12 hours hatched are also an alternative but not a good one (do not try to enrich them) and should be only part of the immediate mix if you have no other choice but Roy has had some luck using them. If my experience (limited) and conclusions are somewhere close to correct, keep the water moving around them - especially if you try feeding frozen/dead foods (NOT frozen brine shrimp!) so that the food is litterly bumping into them. My best success was using a breeder net inside the main tank with a power head blowing on the outside of the net.

GOOD LUCK and KEEP posting!

 

[Jon Crossan]

ok so i raided my filter and found two copepods. one is the size of one of the little inklets and the the other is a little smaller. I tried pushing them up to the little octos but they didn't really seem interested (i hope that means they are just not hungry). Will they be ok to leave in these containers overnight without any water flow?

 

[DWhatley]

Jon,
I wish I knew but probably so. I think the food needs to be dense and very small if they are ignoring the pods (but not so dense that it hampers breathing) and is one reason I would worry about letting them loose in the tank (as well as hungry hardware). If you have air stones, air line, valves and pump handy, you might make an airline octopus to move the water or experiment with an airline in one container but not in the others.

I saw a post from Roy earlier so he is not likely to see your request for help tonight but he has, by far, the greatest amount of experience with both this octo and with raising hatchlings. You might try a private PM so that he will see it next login.