keeping sepiola atlantica

[Craig]

has anyone tried this? If so could they please share any information they have, i cant find anything yet on food source, water temperature tank size, life expectancy etc etc. but my university occasionally pulls up live specimens and eggs while sampling and have said that should i want some they'd be glad to oblige. from what i hear they dont live very long so ideally i'd like to be breeding them aswell. so far the closest ive got to any of this is stareing at one in a bucket for half an hour or so. unfortunately from reading the articles here there is no way i could have a tank large enough for officialis at present, so any help would be greatly appreciated

 

[Nancy]

This is a bobtail squid that lives in the northeast Atlantic Ocean. It's tiny (1.5 cm).

Nancy

 

[Colin]

Hi Craig

You'd need a chiller for a start, and a good one at that, you'd want to keep the water at about 5 - 8 deg C so maybe not a god example for a living room?

Although I haven't kept them personally I do know people who have had them for a short time in aquaria. They are short lived and shy, burying in the sand most of the time.

Specifically, feeding was on Crangon and Corophium shrimps.

A 10 gal tank would be fine for a few of them

Are you at Aberdeen uni?

cheers
Colin

 

[Craig]

southampton uni actually. i'm really unsure of the temperature that the atlantica, because as you said 5-8 deg C sounds right, but the ones we caught were in 20 deg C water. i'm guessing i'd have to obtain a record of the water temperatures anually and match them in a tank to ensure reproductionso from about 5 deg C-21 deg C, im going to ask my uni if they have any spare kit from their aquarium, the other idea of course is bandenisis (though that might be spelled wrong) but i hav'nt heard of them being for sale in the uk.

 

[seagrassbed]

Hi Craig

I found a posting in an Austrian Forum on keeping Sepiolidae from the Mediterranean Sea. This is the link, its German!

It tells that two Sepiolidae (less than 4cm) were kept in a 30Liter tank. The tank was all but full - it had a sandbet of 4cm and 5cm of saltwater. Neiter heating nor cooling was used so the water had room temperature. Water was exchanged weekly (with a marine aquarium). The author advices a small filter unit (but did not use one). The animals ate live Gammarus, liked to hide in the sand by day, showed interessting color changes and were peacefull to each other. The two cephalopods reached a age of 22month in this setup.

Hope that helps

 

[seagrassbed]

Sepiola

Oh ... You might already know this link?

 

[Jean]

Hi Craig,

We've kept Sepioloidea pacifica we had a 10cm sand bed and fed them mixed zooplankton. It was in a flow through system kept at ambient. The squirts seemed particulary fond of amphipods and small mysids! One of our students also kept them for his 4 th year project and found that a) they will escape and b) they can turn cannibal, both of which were unexpected but you can't argue with missing critters and a beak in the gut of one!!!! So you will need to escape proof the tank and keep your stock density low!

Cheers

Jean