Cuttle Care?

[Amras]

I'm just trying to get a feel for the ideal tank size for a cuttlefish(Sepia officinalis). I've heard they can get a foot and a half long- It would seem to me that a 6' tank would be the minimum. Does that sound correct?

Thanks

 

[cephalopoder]

I bought a 180 gal this summer for my future cuttles. It's the normal 72"x24"x24". A friend of mine has a single sepia.o in a 75gal. You could fit 2 in a 180. They grow up to two feet so they need the room. One thing with cuttles is you need even more bio load ability than a octo. They put out a ton of ammonia. It's recomended that you have 3 times the filtering capacity per the size of the tank. Good luck.

 

[Joez]

Hi,

I don't know about cuttlefish, so I did a search because I saw your question. A lot of links came up on the search. The first link was this one:

http://is.dal.ca/~ceph/TCP/index.html

They are sure interesting, and I guess a couple of small ones would be fun to keep. I guessed that they are cold water animals, but only some species are.

Anyway, thanks for bringing it up so I could learn something.

Good luck!

 

[Sea Dragon]

Cephalopoder,

How did your friend obtain a cuttle and is it true that they only live for about a year?

 

[cephalopoder]

Well most octopuses live only a year. A cuttle can live up to 18 months or so. So they actually live a little longer than octos and its easy to tell the age because of their size. My friend got his at cephsource. It was a 3 inch baby when he got it, a few months old.

 

[BigLuke]

The age of a cuttle is hard to determine, size means very little since size is directly correlated to how much they are fed, you can have two cuttles the same age but vastly different in size. Size and age are also directly related to temp, the lower the temp the longer you can maintain them, but 18-20 months seems to be about the max, with 10-14 months the norm. I must say though, I have never seen or heard of a Sepia officinalis of 24" total length! Sepia latimanus maybe ....

BL

 

[cephalopoder]

Reliable sources say the cephalopod resource center in texas has some sephia.o's as big as door mats. The age related to size can not be reliable just as you say, but for captive bred babies.... it can be a decent rough guess.

 

[BigLuke]

Reliable sources say the cephalopod resource center in texas has some sephia.o's as big as door mats. The age related to size can not be reliable just as you say, but for captive bred babies.... it can be a decent rough guess.

I've been there twice ... never saw any as big as door mats! lol No how ... no way ...