Question about cuttlefish and squid

[Dearth]

I was shown a video today of an aquarium store in the US selling small cuttlefish and small squid and was asked by the person showing me the video if they can be kept in the home aquarium to which I had no answer

So to cure my curiosity my question is can cuttlefish and squid be raised in the home aquarium or is it not recommended?

[Ryanerickson]

yes but they need there own tank and live food. I've kept them before it was a lot of work also they ended up eating each other when they got bigger. survival of the fittest!! jl has flamboyant cuttle fish right now pretty cool.

[Dearth]

How big do the cuttlefish get?

[WarDog]

I like my calamari on the crispy side.

[whatcaneyedo]

How big do the cuttlefish get?

The varieties that I've seen for sale are just a couple of inches and have very short natural lifespans. The flamboyant cuttlefish for instance only grows to around 2-3".

[corpusse]

yes but they need there own tank and live food. I've kept them before it was a lot of work also they ended up eating each other when they got bigger. survival of the fittest!! jl has flamboyant cuttle fish right now pretty cool.

WOW. If I could get flamboyant eggs I may be convinced to try again, although now is not a good time for me.

I've raised cuttlefish a couple of times (sepia bandensis), as well as kept octopus so if anyone has any questions I'd be happy to answer them.

There is one big problem with raising them. They NEED live food as babies. This pretty much has to be mysid shrimp. You will find people who say no that's not true and I'm sure if you have a big fuge you could put a couple dozen eggs in and 1 or 2 would survive, but if you feed mysis you should have 90%+ survival rate if they don't hatch premature.

Amphipods are too big and the shells too hard, brine do not offer enough nutrition. The problem for me when I raised them was I was paying about $70 every 1-2 weeks in shipping costs for the live mysids. A lot of times they would not clear customs in time and I had to go pick them up at the airport. Occasionally they'd make it and get delivered to my door. While they can survive 2 days transit half of them will be eaten by the other half.

The problem now from what I understand is reed mariculture does not ship them to Canada anymore. They actually came from a lab in florida not them directly. It's too bad too because with those mysids you could probably keep anything alive as they were used in experiments so they were all the same age and health and in perfect condition. I did try wild caught ones once and the water smelled so bad with a good percentage dying off in transit. I'm sure some of the lab grade ones died in transit too but the difference was the remaining ones were so healthy they consumed the dead ones right away.

You will also need a transitional live food when they get too big for live mysids. I used shore shrimp, I forget the species name off hand but they look exactly like ghost shrimp but they are marine or at least brackish. Now I did try and skimp and use freshwater ghost shrimp but even gutloading them the cuttlefish did not grow as fast and suffered shorter lifespans. 10-12 months is what you should get out of them. It's a lot of work for a short time but they are very rewarding.

If you live near the ocean it may be possible to catch them food which would be a substantial savings. The cost of the eggs is basically irrelevant.

I would not buy them in any other form other than egg. Maybe if I saw a flamboyant in real life I'd pick him up and hope against hope it's a pregnant female. An adult could die of old age within days and you'd never know, its a short quick downhill slide. Eggs are more rewarding too. Seeing them change colour while still in the egg is very neat. Miss those guys but they are really pricey to feed, somewhat time consuming and a very short lived project. Highly recommend if you can afford. I know at the time I was a little burnt out on reef keeping and found this a great way to stay deeply involved in the hobby.

tonmo.com is a great cephalopod forum too.