[Cuttlefish]: My Bandensis, Sugarbear, Clyde, Skelator, & Patricia

[Squirlntus]

Thank you.
I feed them Omega one micro pellets every day.

 

[Tomh]

Ok good, i am was thinking of soaking pellets with something like Vitachem and feeding it to them like i do with my fish.

 

[Squirlntus]

Thats a good idea, then I would know for sure they are getting proper nutrition.
I know they need a lot of fatty acids that they would normally get from shrimp. Thats why I chose the Omega One. It is very rich in omega 3 and 6 fatty acids. And its the only fish food I have found that has has fish and seafood as its primary ingredients, instead of wheat and soy.

 

[Squirlntus]

Sugarbear. My favorite.

 

[Squirlntus]

Has anybody had any problems with your cuttlefish suddenly not wanting to eat? First it was Clyde, then Patricia, I lost both of them. Now Skelator doesnt want to eat either. Sugarbear is still eating well, but im super worried and not sure what to do!!!

 

[Squirlntus]

So , I removed Skelator from the nursery basket because I was worried that my basket somehow had something to do with my babies suddenly not eating. It was all of the cuttles in the basket having problems, and the one outside of it was fine. Skelator is still just under an inch in size so I was pretty skeptical about his ability to find the food I was putting in the tank for him, bit I was desperate to try something. After I removed him I did a water change, just in case, and tried to feed him. I still had a few baby cherry shrimp left in my tank from when the cuttles were tiny. The cherry shrimp had grown a bit since I had moved the cuttlefish onto bigger food. So I gave Skelator the cherry shrimp and he went right after it!! Next I fed Sugarbear. I think sometimes Sug gets confused by the reflections in the tank and has a hard time hunting. He/she always catches it eventually, but it takes a few tries. This time she struck at the shrimp and missed and started spinning, like she did when I brought her home. She did this for about three minutes before stopping and settling down. I thought she was going to die. But she didnt. And she caught and ate the shrimp later.
After that I made a trip to the freshwater wholesaler and hand picked all of the smallest ghost shrimp I could find since Skelator was so ready to eat the smaller cherry shrimp. He has been eating normally ever since. Im not sure exactly what the problem was, but it looks like it has cleared up. ( hopefully)

 

[Squirlntus]

Sugarbear has started spinning again.
She has been spinning all day today.
One of her eyes is clouded over and I cant see her pupil at all.
Do you think the spinning could be a vision loss thing?
Is this an illness?
She is around six months old. I feel like this is too soon for her to be going senesent.
She has spun before, but never like this.
I am very worried.
My parameters are all where they should be.
No ammonia or nitrites, no nitrates, 78 degrees Fahrenheit. PH 8.2 salinity 1.026

 

[tonmo]

ugh, sorry to hear. didn't she stop when you isolated her last time? is that an option? at #tcon7 there was discussion that folks had never seen a bounce-back from spinning so anything you offer here would be a learning, I think.

 

[Squirlntus]

Ok. Her eye is very swollen and clouded over. Im pretty sure it has somethimg to do with that.
She has problems with depth perception when she is hunting and I think this could be the reason why.
I think I am going to attempt to medicate the tank and hope that Im not too late.
If she has some type of bacterial infection then there is a possibility that Skelator might have it as well.
I will post specifics afterwards.

 

[Squirlntus]

poor sug

 

[Squirlntus]

She has wedged herself under a rock , presumably to stop herself from spinning.
Must be exhausting spinning so much.

 

[DWhatley]

I have had a couple of octopuses have eye infections as adults. I have used Tetracycline in their food with some success. Diego (bimac) lost his ability to equilibrate near the end of his life (also with an eye infection) but tetracycline did not help at that point.

 

[Squirlntus]

Ok.
I think thats the only medication I can easily get ahold of.
I may try something else with a bath as Sugar is having a hard time catching food at this point.
I have found a thread where chloromycetin was administered orally and helped with many bacterial infections. It slowed down the progression of cataracts and eye infections, but never cured them.
The eye infections also seemed to cause depth perception problems for the other cuttles as well.

I will be preemptively treating Skelator as I am seeing that a lot of these problems are contagious, and he may already be infected, just not showing the same symptoms.
This may be responsible for his past anorexia.

 

[Squirlntus]

So to administer orally, I can soak some food in the tetracycline and feed that to the shrimp, then feed the shrimp to the cuttles?
They refuse to eat frozen foods.
I tried to get them onto frozen and this resulted in them starting to refuse food altogether, and also to start inking any time I came near the tank.

 

[DWhatley]

I am not sure if this will work but it is worth a try. Getting an infected animal to eat the treated food has been a problem for me. It seemed that the earlier I caught the infection, the more likely the octopus would eat the prepared food. I think I would put the medication in the water with the shrimp as well to try to get them coated.

Have you attempted touching the arms with food on a string/stick? I tried this with mixed success with octos but not cuttles.