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Potential Metasepia set-up?

briareus

Cuttlefish
Registered
Joined
Apr 28, 2012
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27
Hello cephalopod community, I'm new to the forum and just as new to any sense of reef keeping, which means I have zero experience in the maintenance of any saltwater set-ups at all.

I know it is a better idea to pick up some less demanding creature to at least get a feel of the hobby, but I really cannot afford to do this in any way. I am 16, and will have to pay out of this from my own pocket, as well as having to position the tank in the bedroom.

My current ideas are that I put the 30 gallon cuttle tank next to its 20 gallon sump, which is intended to contain a peacock mantis shrimp. I am clueless about where to place the skimmer, and I would like to grow plenty of macroalgae in the mantis' reside.


The following are my questions.


I am reading a book specifically written on the topic of reef chemistry and it seems like every chemical hangs in a balance related to another.

What are the specific parameters that are of actual importance to the maintenance of a flamboyant in a set-up with only live rock?


I am in a tropical country relatively close to the Lembeh straits. Cuttlefish will come by more naturally at a cheap price and with better health.

However, the consequent problem is that I have a room temperature that averages at 30 degrees celsius.

Has anyone got a affordable and relatively low maintenance idea to bring that temperature down to a good 25 celsius?


Above, I mentioned about a skimmer. It would be great if anyone could shed some light about the level of filtration needed, and how to do so with the use of live rock, macroalgae and similar ideas. It would once again have to be highly affordable and exact suggestions would be great.


Thank you.
 
Welcome to TONMO! I've a fair amount of salt water experience, & I'm STILL trying to learn a bit more before I make the dive, so to say. You're at the right place to learn, and it'd be well worth your while to refrain from jumping right in ( it's going to take a solid 3 months minimum to cycle the tank properly anyway). Generally speaking, you'd place the skimmer & other equipment in the sump, but again, make sure you thoroughly think out your set up before going out & buying up all sorts of gear. With no experience, books would be my first acquisition. Right now you'd be looking at an expensive heartache. Also, the flamboyant is not even recommended for the mos advanced hobbyists; academic institutions can struggle with their care! Experts will soon chime in, & your questions are best answered by them, but at this stage of the game, research is your best friend. Good luck to you! Post frequently, & ask lots of questions. If cephs are where your heart is, TONMO will get you there...
 
i know you don't want to hear it but i have to reiterate what you have allready said wich is starting with sephs is a bad idea for you and for the animals, but enuf of that neative talk(for now)
if you can try and get a 40 breeder instead and put the 20gal sump(or bigger) underneith it instead of beside it the bigger the sump the better, for cephs i'd say keep the skimmer in the first compartment so the skimmer can try and cetch any ink before it hits the rest of the sump. it's best to have an overrated skimmer that will handle 2x-3x the water in your system to help controle the extra waste of hungry cephs.
now for more negative(sorry) but you can't keep a peacock in a lighted macro tank they don't like bright or any light for that matter and it WILL be over stressed and eventualy suffer and die from shell rot, also a 20g is way to small for a peacock they need 30-40g minimun and this should be a wide shallow tank for plenty of floor space for digging building(a 40 breeder is perfect for this).
their are alot of other smaller light frendly mantises that can be housed in a macro tank or even a well lit reef tank, i have a male/femail pair g. ternatensis that are very colorfull and amazing to watch their building skillz, gertie my female g.t. is curently trying to build a tree fort in a floating ball of cheato. gertie is also curently living in the sump of my octo system. i think you should start with just a mantis then move up to the cuttles later after you get the hang of salt water chemistry but plese no light on a peacock it's torture for them.
i don't want to get to far off the ceph topic here, if you want to talk mantisis you can e-mail me and also check out the mantis forum on RC and definetly check out Dr roy caldwells web page roys list of stomatopods for the aqurium
 

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I can't add a lot that other members have not said but want to encourage you to learn about keeping a saltwater tank without the often traditional heart ache and wasted money. Getting started with a limited budget means starting with something with limited requirements and your interest in a mantis is ideal (a peacock might wait though by starting with something a bit less challenging). Hopefully this will be a long term love affair with the ocean and keeping tanks and you will be surprised at how quickly the time passes once you have your first tank established. That being said, I will warn you that the initial set up can be boring as you age your tank and because new aquarists want to SEE something, the term "new tank syndrome" has been coined and often discussed. Another expression, "nothing good happens fast in a saltwater tank" (Google it to note the quantity of references and topics) is also often quoted in the attempt to explain the need for NO speed while creating a habitable environment.

With your financial limits, starting with your sump (placed lower than your eventual display tank so that water will ultimately drain to the sump and then be pumped up to the display) might be an interesting approach. If your sump is large enough, you can begin curing live rock there for the eventual main display. Since you will want to keep a mantis in this tank, you will need to partition it to allow for your skimmer and pump (the pump will return the water to the main display eventually) to make it safe for the sump animals but it can still be an exciting tank in it self while you grow your "salt water thumb" (as Thales puts it :biggrin2:).
 
this is the 15g sump under my 72 bowfront it would be bigger but its the bigest tank i can fit in their without takig the tank off the stand
the tank drains into the first section wear the skimer pump is the skimer drains into the second chamber wich contains a bio weel(unnessary) live rock, macros and my female g.t. then over another wall to the pump then through a u.v. sterilizer and back to the tank. the last wall should be replaced with a double wall first flowing over then under the second wall this creates a bubble trap wich should prevent bubbles from entering the pump and being blown into the tank
the second pic is the 20g sump under my 92 corner bow wear you can see the over/under bubble trap before the pump section right at the far right side of the pic.
the black boxes on top are coralife mini aqualights wich i have replaced with leds
 

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Four replies in a day! That's great help guys. And don't worry about the negatives, I like them, and knowing them ensures you don't get slapped in the face later instead.

Alright. So I just have a couple of things to clarify at this stage. When we're talking about flamboyants, I noticed that a couple of individuals had similar success with the species in my country, despite their seeming lack of experience in saltwater. These threads are found on tonmo itself. Basically...are we talking about the same flamboyant cuttlefish? Or do they actually end up here in far better health than they would over in say America or Britain? I'm in Singapore.

Thanks for the mantis advice, I forgot about the shell disease aspect. Dr Caldwell recommends a 25 gallon tank for the peacock mantis, but it seems that most people pick up success with a 40 gallon. I'll opt for G.ternatensis, or maybe reconsider something simple for the sump.

I'll be real honest. Flamboyants cost a tenth of the price you guys get them for, and therefore, I find them a very very good investment indeed. However, if it can be mentioned that S.bandensis are a far better and entertaining choice, I will go for them instead.

Nonetheless, my original questions still stand for answers, with a couple more here.

If I were to place a skimmer in the sump..do I have to sort of segregate it from the main area if I were to put creatures in there?

I have very anti-animal parents and I think a 30 gallon main set-up is as far as I can go in my bedroom.
 
A skimmer has an intake pump that sucks in water and infuses air. The pump is the part that can be dangerous to anything living in the same compartment. Because the water is infused with air, the return water will have air bubbles that will disrupt viewing and can be a problem for some, but not all animals. I have found that using a polyester filter sock under the skimmer return resolves most bubble issues but the pump intake is dangerous in both that is sucks in the water and that it has an impeller (like a fan blade) that can cause damage even if the animal is not slurped up into the unit.

If you have access to S. bandensis, there are a couple of reasons I would suggest you start with this animal over the Flamboyants. Keep in mind that most cephs (octos or cuttles) that we can keep in a home environment have a natural lifespan of only 12-18 months. So beginning with a species that is both more abundant and has an aquarium track record of success (to an extent, they are still not beginner animals) would be a more ecologically sound choice and have a better chance of initial success. Multiple generations have been successful (though limited. Egg laying is quite successful but full life cycle is still a challenge) with the bandensis where Flamboyants are only recently being reared in some of the public aquariums. The aquarium environment for S. bandensis is established but we are still figuring out the Flamboyants needs for both space and substrate.
 
oh man the doc's going to start sending me letter bombs if he see's i steared someone tward a g.t, he has stated several times on rc that this species is colected from the tops of hard corals often destroying the coral in the proces and has asked that peapole not purchace this perticular species, even though i have 2 myself i am begining to see his point, i have always thought of mantis shrimp as a byproduct of coral harvesting but given that the corals they live in are comonly grown in aquaculture facilitys in the states and mantis are not it makes sense that the mantis is the target animal in this harvest so untill the doc perfects the capive breeding of mantis shrimps gonzo and gertie are the last g.t's i will own.
their are alot of other inter tidal species listed on roys page that are just as colorfull for some good pics look on RC for posts by a guy named KARN he has a talent for taking awsome pics of his mantises(like 20 of them) or search for minnie and maximus they are amazing
ok ceph heads sorry for all the mantis talk i'm done
 
As always, steering someone to INFORMATION is a positive move so including links is helpful, even if we are side stepping just a bit. There are quite a few other ceph keepers that have kept or currently keep mantis. Some by accident :biggrin2: when they found one in LR and learned that they could be a positive, albeit secluded, pet.
 
Thanks for all the advice so far, but the following questions have yet to be addressed.

Has anyone got a affordable and relatively low maintenance idea to bring that temperature down by 5 degrees celsius?

What are the specific parameters that are of actual importance to the maintenance of a cephalopod in a set-up with only live rock?
 
Lowering your tank temperature without using a chiller might receive more creative suggestions on some of the general reef keeping forums like reefcentral but I'll mention the ones I either use or remember.

My own tanks:
I use a 6" clip on fan over a 35 gallon (filled roughly half way) open sump. My return pump and skimmer pump are placed in the sump and the only heat producing electronics in the displays are a pair of Koralias (2 in each tank). This gives me a water temp of between 2 and 4 degrees F below ambient. Since I run them 24/7 all summer, I am not sure what the actual temperature drop is from the additional heat transferred from the electronics. I do have to turn the off during the winter or the tank will be too cool even with the small heaters active. The variance is dependent upon the length of the worst heat of the day. The fully open sump also helps to dissipate heat. I would expect but cannot verify that greater surface area would also enhance evaporative cooling. Fans will require daily freshwater top off.

Other suggestions I recall:
Lighting - lower wattage bulbs or LEDs will reduce the heat being added to the tank. Reducing the amount of time the lights are on over the tank is another form of heat reduction.


Controlling the ambient temperature in the room - somewhat of a no brainer that people often overlook. This can get expensive if the room is not easily controlled but can be quite doable in many cases.

Insulation around the back, sides and at the bottom of the tank. This can help if the tank itself is not producing heat but can work in reverse if the heat is being trapped. Acrylic is a better insulator than glass and may be helpful to control temp in either the main tank and or the sump.
 
Hi, like I said on RC, I wouldn't recommend anyone start their saltwater experience with cephalopods. Just with basic saltwater there is so muck to get a handle on - adding difficult to keep animals that are difficult to feed just compounds the issues. Sure you can find some stories of people getting away with it, but most of the time jumping right to hard to keep animals often ends in dead animals (though most people don't post 'Check it out, it died!).
 
briareus;195129 said:
Thanks for all the advice so far, but the following questions have yet to be addressed.

Has anyone got a affordable and relatively low maintenance idea to bring that temperature down by 5 degrees celsius?

What are the specific parameters that are of actual importance to the maintenance of a cephalopod in a set-up with only live rock?

That is a big drop and I don't think you are going to find anything but an actual chiller that is going to have a 5 degree C pulldown.

I think the other answers you are looking for are in this article. Cephalopod Care
 

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