Nautilus in my tank

[DWhatley]

Thanks for the update. Please continue to report on your "therapy", for better or worse as it may help a lot for other animals that end up with the floating problem. Also kind of mention the SIZE (both gallons and depth) of your tank as you keep us up to date so that anyone entering late into the journal is aware of the kind of requirements needed for these animals.

 

[jsshark1]

sounds good.
I do be leave the therapy is helping, when I just got the large Nautilus he would only be able
to pull him self down the side of my 720 gal tank about a inch till he could not hold on any more and would pop back to the surface,
I seen him once after the therapy go half way down my 4' deep tank, yesterday when it was time for therapy to be over I lifted the cage and I could not be leave it he was holding on to one of the rocks at the bottom and I had the cage about 1" above him,
he looked like the pull to the surface was not bad as he was still like in sleep mode, I left it that way for about a hour till a shrimp started bothering him and he let go, ( I keep the cage 1" above him I did not want him to shoot up 4' to the surface).....

I don't give him therapy every day, only days that he is facing away from the side of the tank and bobbing frustrated trying to go down, the days i don't do therapy is the day he is holding on the side of the tank himself in sleep mode like the others. the small ones never did the frustrating bobbing thing like the big one.

i so look forward to see him swim freely at the bottom...

 

[gjbarord]

Great pics and really nice system!!

Is the system covered or is it always subjected to light?

Most of what you are posting and saying seems to be working and you look well ahead of the game for nautiluses. The only thing that concerns me is the idea of trying to get 2 additional nautiluses from your LFS to try to breed them. Do you know the sexes of the nautiluses that you have? Do you know the sexes of the nautiluses the LFS has? From over 10 years of nautilus experience, I can almost guarantee that no LFS is able to procure sex requests for nautiluses. It is pretty much a crap shoot. Now, let's just say you do get some males and females in the system. We really don't know the best way to elicit mating in the first place. If you get mating behavior, there is even less of a chance of having successful copulation. If you have two nautiluses successfully copulate, then you have to worry about the eggs being fertilized correctly and laid correctly. If they are fertilized and laid correctly, you will have to wait nearly a year for development, which usually fails in captivity. If development is successful and the eggs hatch, I do not know of any nautiluses that have survived passed a year in captivity after hatching.

Long story short, it is difficult to breed nautiluses on nearly every level, even for the best facilities in the world.

You have a great system there and it sounds like you provide excellent care. But at this point, with so many questions still unanswered about wild populations of nautiluses, I don't think that trying to procure more nautiluses for breeding is the best decision. It's one thing to happen upon a nautilus in your LFS. It's another to actively pursue nautiluses at your LFS.

And like others have said, document, document, document because you are doing some cool things, even without the breeding.

Greg

 

[jsshark1]

thanks for the complement to my system

I have no lights on the tank most of the light you are seeing is the flash from the camera I have bamboo on the sides of the tank for shading . I have added a cover over the bamboo on the side facing outside sun light to shade more light. the light from the room is more then enough. if any i will add some blue LED's for night time...

today the large one is hanging out on the side of the tank with some buddys

I think I mention breading because I just have read a couple of articles on breading them ( it took them years just to get one egg ).

I have found a site with information on how to tell what sex they are.
Female and Male Nautilus

I can tell I have both males and females in the tank.
but i agree with you 100% about getting more from my LFS , they told me strait out that they have no control what is sent ( sex, size )....

but maybe I should not put the idea of them breading. I would do nothing different but give them good care and if they do bread it will not be because I did something different to make them bread.... any way I also read it takes a hole year after the egg is laid for the Nautilus to be born...

 

[DWhatley]

I think Greg was concerned about too much light, not too little. They are deep water day dwellers and don't see a lot of light in the wild (I have seen conflicting comments about how often and when they come near the surface but Greg has been on two trips to observe them so hopefully he will comment). If you want to do night viewing, red should be better than blue for detectability (or lack of it) by the nauts but still allow you to see their actions.

 

[jsshark1]

envy... I would love to see them in the wild ..

I be leave the amount of light that goes into the tank is ok , from my observation. it is pretty dark in the tank with out the camera flash,
I did go though steps and different designs with paper first.. the Nautilus will tell you if the light is to bright.
half shaded and half with no shade and they will swim to the shaded side to sleep. they have no problem being in sleep mode in the brights part of the tank so I would think if there was too much light they would be asleep in the most dark part of the tank most of the time.. as always the system is still in the works I still plan on covering the top for a cooling system i am planing that will make it a bit darker, at the moment the top is open , as well as I still have more landscaping inside the tank walls ,, ideas ideas

 

[jsshark1]

the Nautilus are doing fine, all but the large one is swimming freely to the bottom .

I found two of them today lip locked. I would assume that they are to small for mating.
I found no info on what size they start.....

 

[DWhatley]

JS,
Robyn's newly published paper may be of interest as you think about what you would like to observe with your critters.

Flexible Spatial Orientation and Navigational Strategies in Chambered Nautilus - Robyn Crook June 2012

I have not read it yet but suspect it is a publication that came from her PhD work.

 

[robyn]

Yep, that looks a lot like copulation to me.

Size at sexual maturity is not well documents and is probably dependent on temperature and food availability, so you may have sexually mature animals that are quite small. Even if you see copulation you may not get eggs, but if you do, awesome! I'm glad to hear the buoyancy issues resolved eventually.

 

[jsshark1]

thanks for the heads up on the info link ,

wow really Robyn it would be nice if one day a egg shows up but i will not hold my breath, it will be all their doing i am just enjoying them and feeding them prawns and live grass shrimp...