EMeyer

I've been maintaining cultures of live mysis and amphipods for some time now to feed cuttlefish hatchlings. After my last batch of hatchlings didnt do well, I have decided to take a break from cuttlefish for a while... maintaining 4+ different varieties of live plankton was a little bit of a pain. So -- I have for sale or trade two lots of live food 1. ~50-100 live mysis shrimp. 2. ~1000 live amphipods I'd sell either lot for $20 or trade for corals (2 or more frags per lot). Can meet anywhere between Albany and Eugene.

whoa, from reading that thread this is definitely the same thing! Many thanks. At least now I know what to look for. I knew it had to be either Annelid or Arthropod... My next post will have pictures of the horrible creature. Wish me luck; I'm going in...

Update -- after removing a ~3 inch section of tube yesterday, it rebuilt it again last night. It makes a beeline from a hole in the rock to my recently placed palys. The palys in question are pink/orange with green centers (they look like that thing people call gobstoppers, although the idea that all palys with the same color morph are the same thing is obviously nonsense). In the past, this unknown predator has also gone after some brightly colored zoanthids (purple face with bright orange skirt and sometimes an orange mouth). It always builds its tube from the hole in the rockwork directly to the zoas or palys, then eats them. It only goes after palys or zoas with interesting colors, especially anything in orange. Last night I looked several times and it was absent... this morning by 5 AM it had completed its tube and eaten several polyps. Tomorrow night I'll scope it out in the middle of the night. If I have to take the rock work apart I will! I think I know which rock it lives in and am curious to see what a freshwater dip will scare out of the rock... I will also take a picture of tonights tube (already tore last night's tube apart) so people can see if theyve ever come across anything similar. Again, its a tube ~1/4" in diameter, made of silk or similar material, adhering to the rock. I have yet to witness the animal itself. A great mystery for this inverts geek. I will find out what this is!

Not a vermetid. They have calcareous shells, and much smaller. This tube is made of fibrous material. Like silk. And much bigger than vermetids. That more or less narrows it down to an Arthropod or Annelid... but I'm unaware of any that eat polyps. This eats 5-10 polyps a night once it reaches the colony. I will add that there are always lots of amphipods running around the tube, but I am very skeptical they made it. While amphipods do make little tunnels in algae sometimes, this tunnel is seriously 1/4" diameter. Thats not normal. Tonight I'll scope it out after dark...

Alright folks, this has me stumped. I have a pest I've never seen. It lives somewhere in my rocks, and at night, it secretes a fibrous, tough, white tube on the rock. The tube is about 1/4" in diameter, and sometimes a few inches long. The tube always appears starting deep in the rock and ending at a zoanthid or palythoa frag. Which the unknown animal eats. Thats right, a tube-dwelling zoanthid and palythoa predator. I have never heard of such a thing. When I remove the tube, it makes a new one the next day. It seems to have a real taste for the more colorful polyps. Anything with orange is apparently delicious. (I know someone will want a picture but honestly if I posted one people would only see a white tube. There aint much to it.) Anyone ever hear of such a thing? If I can figure out what it is perhaps I can put together a plan for getting rid of it...

So happy to hear I'm not the only one. Deleted my FB account about 5 years ago and genuinely consider it one of the best decisions I've ever made. When the rest of the world joins us the world will be a better place!

Thanks for the feedback... on further reflection, a 75 would also work for me. Updating OP to reflect this.

I need to do a deep clean/restart of the display tank (55 gal) and am considering an upgrade while I'm cleaning. Anyone from Albany to Eugene have a 75 or 90 gal or similar youd be interested in selling? Willing to pay standard used equipment prices (50% of the price of a new one, or up to 1$ per gallon) Thanks!

I'll post some updates to my cuttlefish tank thread soon, but the babies described in this post are long gone. Sorry, early cuttlefish development goes quickly, they either die or grow rapidly in the first few days. In this round, I ended up with 4/6 hatch rate and 2/4 survival. The remaining 2 are eating like little monsters and I'll be keeping them. Glad I wasnt able to sell any in time, in hindsight

Thats OK, sea urchins are banned from my display tanks anyway. When I want random destruction of corals and aquascape I can always stick my hand in the tank to do some cleaning. Shrimp are also excluded from one of the tanks by virtue of being irresistible to cuttlefish. I also have read they are size-selective filter feeders but neither dried or live phytoplankton products have made a difference for me. I do continue to feed live phyto several times a week because I believe the christmas tree worms eat it. One thing that is common to both tanks is hermits, but I've never witnessed them messing with feather dusters. (Only crazy idea I can think of: I've seen bristleworms go absolutely bananas over them. I know the common theory is bristleworms can only eat detritus. Since I've witnessed bristleworms attacking and eating live shrimp on multiple occasions, I dont find it far fetched that after they finish pulling off the crown of the feather duster (seen this several times) they could finish it off. But thats a fringe theory, I'm hoping its something simpler like food!)

Hydnophora is a good idea, personally my money is on Merulina Not too distantly related (both in the robust clade, both placed in Favidae depending how you define Favidae)

Over the past two years I've killed quite a few worms trying to figure out the secret. I've ordered from 3 different vendors; I've put them in two different tanks; I've tried a range of foods from homemade seafood smoothie to live phytoplankton or newly hatched brine shrimp. To be clear, the animals I am talking about are the large feather duster worms (Sabellastarte or Bispira ) like these https://www.bluezooaquatics.com/productlist.asp?did=2&cid=297 I've never seen one live more than a couple weeks, and often its only a few days. They died in tanks supporting zoas, SPS, a thriving christmas tree worm "rock" (porites), and even cuttlefish. So its not a complete failure of water chemistry or something. Fortunately theyre not terribly expensive or intelligent so I dont mind experimenting a bit more, but havent had any promising results so far. Any feather duster worm experts here? Anyone have advice? Thanks!

I'm hatching another batch of dwarf cuttlefish eggs (Sepia bandensis) and once again I have some extras. Currently I have one available. There are two more eggs in the hatching chamber so any day now I may have two more. I'd like to move these as quickly as possible to avoid spending money on extra food. Currently they are newly hatched -- less than 1 cm. They ideally want to eat live mysis, but you can sometimes get them straight onto amphipods at this age. Brine shrimp apparently never work and are not worth trying. $25 each or will trade for corals. Can meet up anywhere between Albany and Eugene.

As an example of the kind of decisions that should be agreed on by the group: dipping all frags and or colonies initially or making that the responsibility of the buyer in their own system. I favor the latter since it would leave a wider range of options (i.e. if its already been dipped in Bayer the buyer doesnt have the option of *not* dipping in Bayer) [Bayer is purely an example here], but would be happy to go with the group consensus. These arent research corals so I don't object to dipping, just point that out as a decision the group would need to agree on.

I have an 8x2 tank (part of my research tanks at work) that I could use for the purpose. I wouldnt try to grow the frags out in the system long term (mix of LED and MH, but PAR is only ~200ish) but wouldnt hesitate to hold colonies and frags for a few weeks to a couple months. Itd take a team but I could contribute my share of the cash, space to hold corals, and help with fragging. I'd want a small team to run it, not just me, so that any important decisions are agreed on by the group and not just my responsibility. I would love to see something like that happen, though! Opening big bags coral colonies from wholesalers is like Christmas morning for me but I get to do it rarely for research and never in the hobby. This would be such a chance..

Its too late for the comment to be relevant for this round. But I have long wanted to do a group buy of wild/maricultured Acro colonies from a wholesaler. For example, consider LivestockUSA as a starting point. http://www.livestockusa.org/ACROPORA.html#acroinfo2 We could buy a box of 10-20 colonies for ~$800-$1400, then frag each colony. If we could get 10 people interested, we'd each end up paying ~$80-140 for a set of 10-20 assorted Acropora frags. Personally, I have zero interest in ever spending $80 on a single booger sized frag but would be really happy paying that for 10-20 frags. I also note that there are other wholesalers including a local one and perhaps they'd be interested in helping us out. Would anyone be interested in that kind of group buy? 10-20 frags for ~$80?

OK. Some new information... I've been raising the larger cuttlefish (hatched from an egg) and the smaller one (bought as juvenile from bluezoo) together in the display tank. They didnt show the coordinated feeding behavior or swim together like my last batch. But they did rest in close proximity to each other and the big one never showed any aggression toward the little one. Keep in mind, the primary cause of the difference in size was simply age. The big one was hatched from an egg about a month before I bought the then newly-hatched juvenile. As you might expect, the larger one has been getting more of the food. Several days ago, I watched as she ate the first two shrimp without letting the little guy get any. So I added two more shrimp and she ate them both in rapid succession. Now I was worried, and this supported my growing fears that the little guy was not getting enough food. So I moved him to my hospital tank (a secondary refugium connected to the display tank and sump) and gave him a shrimp. He showed no interest... and died 4 hours later. The next day, the bigger cuttlefish, left alone in the display tank, showed no interest in live food and also died later that day. The cuttles were about 5 and 6 months of age (less than the maximum lifespan of 1-1.5 years) and even the largest was smaller than the expected maximum size. Lifespan is dependent on temperature in these animals so I keep them relatively cool (25-26°C). I also did not see any of the prolonged senescence that's been described in these animal in old age (cataracts, loss of feeding abilities, reduced swimming performance). So I find it unlikely they died of old age. Since these animals never showed any strong evidence of pair bonded behavior this casts doubt on my previous hypothesis (death of a broken heart). I see several possibilities. 1. Some change in water chemistry killed both animals. Nitrates were undetectable as always (there is a ton of macroalgae in the system), and Ca and Alk were normal (>400 and ~9 respectively). I had recently corrected a salinity deviation (from just above 40 to 35 ppt). It is possible that this stressed both animals and they died from it. But I dropped salinity slowly over a period of 3 days and nothing else died, including several echinoderms known to be highly sensitive to salinity fluctuations. So I am skeptical salinity did it. Perhaps some other, unknown and untested change in water chemistry? 2. A disease infected them both and they died from its effects. Impossible to rule out. I think literally nothing is known about cuttlefish pathogens. 3. Some problem with a batch of food killed them both. I buy grass shrimp in batches from local pet stores who receive them in weekly shipments from their wholesalers. Perhaps one of these batches was bad in some way, e.g. some medication given to the shrimp or a pathogen carried by them. 4. Perhaps the animals were in fact pair bonded like I hypothesized with the first batch (the previous story, above). They spent most of their time out of sight in caves in the rock, and I only observed them for minutes to an hour each day. Perhaps the same thing happened as before... or perhaps the previous story was caused by one of the alternative explanations above. Lacking funding to pursue this question in a systematic way, all I can do is incrementally improve. I will work next on growing my own food source as much as possible. I am gonna take a break for a bit from cuttles and leave it as a feather duster and echinoderm tank for now... but I'll come back at it with another batch and try again, with homegrown food. I will also take monthly water samples and preserve these to later testing in case another mortality even occurs. Such interesting animals. But there are clearly a few more details to work out for keeping them in captivity. Has anyone reading this ever kept dwarf cuttlefish? If so, have you ever observed mortality like I've described here?

Update time. A few months ago I got some new eggs to restock the cuttlefish tank. This round was not as easy as the first; I had poor hatch and mortality rates this time so I had to order two batches of eggs then a couple hatchlings. But at last, I once again have two cuttlefish in the display tank. One of the cuttlefish I hatched from an egg in this round is nearing adult size. Here are a few video clips of her (I hope its a her) feeding. These are the first videos documenting her feeding in the display tank, not the best videos. The video quality is not great but check out her use of camouflage in hunting behavior at the end, pretty cool. Next steps: training them onto frozen food. So far they show no interest. Also, the second cuttlefish (purchased later as a hatchling) is still smaller but I hope he turns out to be a male. In my first batch, the males were more adventurous and aggressive in exploring the tank and feeding, while the female held back and only fed after the males had fed. In this second batch, the larger cuttle is cautious and I am hoping shes a female. The smaller one is a bit more adventurous, hopefully he turns out to be a male. We've already seen how multiple males in one tank works so fingers crossed...

Im a big fan of Dremel with diamond cutting wheel for massive colony types. You can cut surprisingly small and neat frags with this, and a screwdriver to pop off the frag once cut. After making a lot of favia and acan frags in this way I have no urge to use a bandsaw. And this is waaaay cheaper...

Update time! No pics close at hand but what a story. I'll fill in some pics and vids later. Since my last update: First, they reached reproductive maturity and things got complicated. Turns out I had 3 males and one female left. Which was exactly 2 males too many. One disappeared completely, its unclear who ate him but I only found his beak. Not even the cuttlebone! Another weak male I rescued after he took a beating, but he died shortly after from his wounds. After that, the strong male and only female settled down to domestic tranquility and behaved like a strongly pair-bonded couple. They had funny interactions during feeding and were more or less attached at the hip... err, mantle? They mated constantly, and produced 11 batches of eggs over the next couple months. Sadly, I was unable to get any to hatch. Not sure what the issue was, since I have good luck with purchased eggs. I will note that none of these homegrown eggs plumped up as much as the purchased ones... perhaps there were fertility issues? In any case, what came next was a surprise. It all started with a sea urchin. This MFer was constantly messing up the tank, and one Saturday morning he was up to his tricks tearing up mushroom and zoas. So I stuck my hand in the tank (what comes next is never good) to grab the urchin and scared the female cuttle. She darted across the tank... face first into the anemone. This is nominally Calliactis polypus, the symbiotic anemone found on hermit crabs. Funny enough, the remaining male had long ago eaten the hermit crab himself but his anemones remained... I immediately brushed her out of the anemone, within seconds, but her fate was sealed. She suffered from intense poisoning over the next 4+ hours, and eventually succumbed. It seemed like a neurotoxin (she basically acted really really drunk) so I held out hope she might recover in my hospital tank but alas, it was too much. Powerful sting, that little anemone. RIP. Minutes after I removed her from the tank her mate swam to the top, obviously looking for her. That night he refused to eat. And for the next 2 days. On the third day I bought some live food ( a rare treat, I'd had them on frozen krill for months)... but he had passed on. He floated there in his hiding spot, still neutrally buoyant, but dead. Its an anecdote, with no control. But these animals have intense behavior and personality that I would rate nearly on par with dogs. I watched the behavior and it truly looked like a pair bond followed by death of a broken heart. There is biological precedent for this but I am unaware of another example in invertebrates. So call me cold hearted or easily distracted by shiny hypotheses, but we are gonna actually do the experiment to see if this is a thing. Stay tuned. In the meantime, I couldnt resist and bought some more eggs which promptly hatched and have just eaten their first meal. pics to come. But I figured the story was worth sharing on its own

Update: The cuttlefish laid MORE eggs last night. Bert, if the eggs I brought you yesterday dont hatch, I've got your backups right here! (Thanks again for the frags) I've got about six eggs in the incubation chamber and a bunch more now in the tank. Ill return to town on Aug 25 and will update here with the status of those eggs.

Looks like most are spoken for but its unclear whether fmorris can arrange to get them before I go out of town and the opportunity is over. I see youre in Portland too, Omoluabi, maybe one of you would like to drive down to Corvallis sometime in the next couple days? I leave town Aug 9 and I expect theyll hatch just before I return ~Aug 25. Edit and update: I took apart the rocks so I could get the eggs and count them. Turns out I have 9, happily bubbling in my incubator now. So that makes the current tally 2 for badxgillen 3 for fmorris want to take the rest?

The canonical answer is mysis shrimp. And they do love mysis shrimp. But mysis shrimp suck to keep alive long term, and shipping aint cheap. This first time through, I followed this progression: mysis->amphipods->saltwater grass shrimp->freshwater shrimp/minnows/goldfish->frozen krill Next time, I'm gonna try to simplify and cheapify the progression: amphipods->freshwater shrimp/minnows/goldfish->frozen krill I dont think theyd ever eat something as small as baby brine shrimp. They did eat adult brine shrimp but since those are widely considered not a nutritious food source unless specially enriched, I didnt make that part of my progression. Once theyre on frozen krill its easy mode. Twice a day I thaw some krill, put it on a wooden skewer, and hand feed the cuttles. Until theyre trained onto frozen, its live food all the way. Think big -- my cuttlefish have eaten spiny lobsters, arrow crabs, and giant hermit crabs 2-4 times their size. They have no interest in small things but if its an arthropod approximately half their size or bigger, they will eat it. I have not found an upper limit yet.

A little under 1 cm when they hatch. The eggs are the size of blueberries. I used an airstone and breeding net to keep them aerated and gently bouncing around for the incubation period. When I ordered them, they took just over two weeks to hatch. My guess is since these were laid last night they probably have 3 weeks to go. I'll post some pictures when I get home.

Last week my cuttlefish got busy, and this morning I spotted a big cluster of eggs! Who wants some? Guess I dont have permissions to post in Classified yet so I'll put these up for trade instead. I have one (extra) dwarf cuttlefish - trained to eat frozen krill or shrimp - $50 or equivalent trades I have 6 cuttlefish eggs and counting - $5 ea or equivalent trades Coolest pets ever...