- Joined
- Jun 27, 2007
- Messages
- 69
Good news and bad news...
During the week since my last update, all the cuttles seemed to be doing well. All were eating, and I have made sure the babies always have food available to them.
I noticed that although all babies were eating well, some were growing very fast, while others were still not much larger than hatchling size. But since all were eating and acting normal, I did not worry much about it. I have continued to keep them separated by size, to make sure the big guys did not out-compete the little ones for food.
Then, within the last two days, the two smallest cuttles have died suddenly for unknown reasons. So there are three left now.
It is frustrating to loose so many cuttles without knowing why. I don't know what would cause some babies to eat and grow, and others to eat just as well and as much, and just simply "fail to thrive". Of course the odds are that a few babies are genetically weaker than the rest, and may just be unfit to live, but this seems like such a high mortality rate.
Has anyone else noticed anything similar, or have found there are any differences in survival rate between captive bred and wild-caught eggs?
On a brighter note, the big guy took down his first shore shrimp last night! Now that he is larger than even the biggest shore shrimp, I guess he is finally confident enough to start hunting them. He could not finish the whole thing, but at least it is a good start.
And then tonight he took his first frozen PE mysis, and munched on it until the remaining shore shrimp wrestled it away from him. But at least one of them finally took frozen...that is a major milestone
During the week since my last update, all the cuttles seemed to be doing well. All were eating, and I have made sure the babies always have food available to them.
I noticed that although all babies were eating well, some were growing very fast, while others were still not much larger than hatchling size. But since all were eating and acting normal, I did not worry much about it. I have continued to keep them separated by size, to make sure the big guys did not out-compete the little ones for food.
Then, within the last two days, the two smallest cuttles have died suddenly for unknown reasons. So there are three left now.
It is frustrating to loose so many cuttles without knowing why. I don't know what would cause some babies to eat and grow, and others to eat just as well and as much, and just simply "fail to thrive". Of course the odds are that a few babies are genetically weaker than the rest, and may just be unfit to live, but this seems like such a high mortality rate.
Has anyone else noticed anything similar, or have found there are any differences in survival rate between captive bred and wild-caught eggs?
On a brighter note, the big guy took down his first shore shrimp last night! Now that he is larger than even the biggest shore shrimp, I guess he is finally confident enough to start hunting them. He could not finish the whole thing, but at least it is a good start.
And then tonight he took his first frozen PE mysis, and munched on it until the remaining shore shrimp wrestled it away from him. But at least one of them finally took frozen...that is a major milestone