Sepia bandensis

[Jitz]

Anyone here has and or had one?
I'm getting a shipment of eggs saturday, and live. It's from an order i placed, good price. Kind of excited to see them, and hatch them. for now they are going in 2 20g aquariums all hooked up to a larger system and sump. Untill i'm finished construction of the beastly setup top secret ;-)

[frankthetank]

Cool can't wait for pictures, I will be following this thread for sure. :woohoo:

[Jitz]

They are here! Saturday morning I picked them up, Egg's were already hatching, right off the bat i had 1 larger one, and 4 freshly hatched. They are TOO COOL FOR WORDS! I've been trying to upload some pics, but it takes forever! they are going to slowly. So i have one for now, more to come, and a video. Since Saturday I now have a total of 15 Sepia Bandensis, and still more eggs to hatch. They are currently set up in 4 breeding separated tanks, in groups of 6 with the largest one by itself and a few living directly in the refugium. I figured i would try different methods all at the same time, see what works better. I was fortunate enough to witness one eating last night. i put tiger pods in each separation for the fry to eat, although many dont have appetites yet, just in case they change their minds, or it looks too convincing to pass up. Ive also added airline tubing that's connected to a return from a filter directly to each partition to add a bit of current and help clean up a bit. along with some liverock and cheto. just to add some variation. They arent very active right now at all. If i increace the flow they'll swim in it for a few seconds then retreat to a less turbulent area. I'm already almost out of tigerpods, i have to get some today or tomorrow at the latest, as they still escape from the breeding holders. Into the refugium. hopefully the little ones in there will be able to find it when they need. I'm hatching some brine shrimp in hopes that they will get eaten. we will see tomorrow.

The pics are in my photo gallery under cuttlefish
http://www.aquariumpros.ca/photopost/showgallery.php?cat=3181&ppuser=
Hope you enjoy!

[vaporize]

tagging along, great success you have there :)

[deeznutz]

That's awsome. I wanted to keep cuttle fish, but uncertain about the maintance.
Let us know how much work they are. I would love to purchase one off you when they are a little more mature and ready to be sold.

definalty tagging along.

good luck

-dan

[Dr. Zoos]

i was just reading over a site about a guy who raises them in the us, he is also a member on RC was if i can find it again ill post the link as it has step by staep what they take to breed and raise, biggest prob i seen was that they are short lived o you need to keep a breeding stock going or buy more every year, cuttlefish have always been one of my fave marine creatures, so i will for sure be following this thread
Shane

[Jitz]

So i turned out the light's today, and came down 30 min later, to find all of them moving around! it's a big change from them just sitting around. it didnt look like they were looking for food, but more like investigating. What really sucks is that i'm out of tigerpods! i would love to put some in right now and see if they will try and eat or not. Definately more nocturnal right now, Especially the older one. I have thought of a name for the posse, they are now the Sepia Banditos :giggle: I'm going to call the supplier tomorrow, in hope that they still have any, more pods would be great, it was a one time deal, but they might just have some more, so i'm going to order if they do. I put brine shrimp hatching last night but none have hatched yet (strange) so i put 2 more batches, of different eggs from differnt sources, hopefully there will be some hatches tonight and i'll have something to feed the gang. I also observed something really cool too, if you startle them, they squirt ink! it's too funny, if you blink you'd miss it, its a tiny little poof that dissipates almost instantly. Its just too funny! They have to be one of the coolest pets i've owned. Besides my sea monkies, lol I cant wait until they get older and larger. I hear they are quite interesting and even interactive. I plan on doing some expirements in the next little while to see what colors they can turn, by putting colored plates underneath them and stirring them up, when they settle, whatever theyve been settling on now they try and turn that color. So when they land on the clear breeder glass, they turn white, i guess that's the closest to clear they go (thank god) that could make them alittle harder to keep track of. So i'm going to try blue's and bright greens, possibly under a floresent light, to see to what extent they change color. Wouldnt it be cool if they could turn lime green and glow?! (I've heard of larger ones actually flashing light, but i dont know if this is true with the dwarfs.) hopefully i'll find out!

[Jitz]

An Update finally!

Good news and bad, bad news is that the larger one that i bought, died, y? probrably because it wasnt eating.
Now for the good news. So i thought it was a good idea to let them roam free in the refugium, well, really it wasnt and it was. before i got a huge clump of cheto, they all managed to get washed over to the side the return pump is, so i think i might have lost one or two there. so i rounded them up and put them back in the breeders. I divided them up, i put 2 in my main tank, and 5 or 6 in the refugium, now with a net to stop the little guys from overflowing and left some in the breeding tank. Last night i was walking by and knoticed one hunting in the cheato!! FINALLY! i was going to try and take a picture but i didnt want to disturb them seeing it's taken forever to get them to do that. So right away, i went and got the freshly hatched brine shrimp and added them to the refugium and turned off the pump. They didnt even seem to notice the shrimp, i couldnt see what it was they were hunting for but they were definately eating. Not all of them but they were. I did take one snapshot quickly, as i couldnt help myself.
http://www.aquariumpros.ca/photopost/watermark.php?file=7082&size=1

Tonight when i get home i'm going to break the cheato up more, so theres more space to get around inside, so they can hunt better. I cant find the little one i let go in the display tank. OH the other ones i left in the display washed down to the refugium where the niger trigger was....i have to say it was quite the epic battle, the little guy almost had him tricked, he fully got disorented with the ink it was squirting, but then as it was trying to hide in the sand, it locked on and CHOMPED him. ahh well. The trigger is gone to a new home now.

[Jitz]

FINALLY!

They are all pretty much eating, caught a few hunting in the cheto tonight, so i put in some more fresh brine shrimp and voila! they started eating them. TOO COOL TO WATCH!
Tomorrow night i'll see if i can record them eating. I'd like to try something larger than brine shrimp though. I need to get me some tigerpods. I'm so relieved, so i let the rest of them go into the refugium, it seems like the best bet in getting them to eat.

[j2quinn]

they may become food for any pest anemones you have.

[coralcroper]

Hey Jitz, I was wondering if you would share where you got hte eggs from>?

[Rmip]

Can you try to feed them glass shrimp? The fresh water kind.

[j2quinn]

what i would like to try is

1. use a small polyester type breeding net.tank
2. use chaeto inside the tank
3. use PE mysis shrimp. (2 shrimp per Cuttle)
4. use mj400 or something smaller to blow PE shrimp around.

I imagine that the blowing would emulate the idea that the shrimp is alive. Secondly, as soon as it lands in the chaeto morph the cuttle hopefully will react and act with its spearing tentacle!!! :)

[Jitz]

lol, i'm going to try feeding them from frozen soon, i just need to finish the other tanks shelves and find a whole lot of ro water fast lol. untill then i'll let them clean out my cheato of anything they can catch.
I managed to get a nice little video of one eating. Only took 40min, cant figure out how to manually set the focus, so it focuses on the cheato instead of the cuttle. but this vid isnt too bad.
Enjoy

Just click on the broken image box, it'll take you to the video.
http://www.aquariumpros.ca/photopost/data/3181/thumbs/Movie.wmv (http://www.aquariumpros.ca/photopost/showphoto.php?photo=7085)

[in_flight]

where's the video jitz?

[Jitz]

where's the video jitz?

Sorry, here

Sepia eating (http://www.aquariumpros.ca/photopost/showphoto.php?photo=7085)

[Cellenzweig]

Hey Jitz, I was wondering if you would share where you got hte eggs from>?

I'm curious as well...