High Tide Aquatics

My cuttlefish project

I got an egg from a local fish store. Spent a week doing research, calling breeders and contacted the Monterey Bay Aquarium about their new cephalpod exhibit ("tentacles ") and found a lot of info that many people repeated. Raising these guys seems easier than breeding clowns.

My egg hatched and I have a cute little bugger in a floating breeder box. He's pretty active and changes color all the time.

I have live baby mysid shrimp on its way and he is already snacking on the fire shrimp larvae that are in my refugium.

Expected life span at 78* is 12 months.
I went back to the store and set up a tumbler for their eggs and told them what I know (they were clueless, the eggs came as an extra from the wholeseller). They haven't seen any that hatched yet.

My wife wants me to breed them and the flamboyant cuttlefish....

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Cuttlefish day 1, changing colors:
 
These are awesome little guys. A shop in socal used to get them in quite often. I always wanted to pick one up but just never did.

Maybe if you start breeding I'll get one once my tank is set up.

Definitely following along with this!

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My husband has always wanted me to get a cuttlefish, but I've read they like a minimum 300g tank. That's a lot of work, cost, and maintenance for one animal for a year. I love visiting them at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Congrats on hatching it! It's so cute!
 
For most species that would be true, along with 60 - 70 degree water but the dwarf cuttlefish and flamboyant cuttlefish stay small (30 gal for 1, 40 to 55 for two...). At reef Temps they live about a year, though the end of their life cycle is a sad thing to watch.

Hatching was easy for me. Getting them to eat frozen food is going to be a lot of work and will probably be at least 6 weeks.
 
The Monterey Bay Aquarium has a new cephalpod exhibit that opened today. I've been in touch with them about raising the cuttlefish and I look forward to seeing the exhibit.
 
Tried feeding them ghost shrimp yesterday, the shrimp are bigger than the cuttlefish but they didn't hesitate to attack them. They only ate about half of the shrimp body. I'll try to take a video this evening. I'm going to let them out of the breeder box next week, just need to make sure they can't get past the refugium chamber.
 
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