14-09-2006, 09:24 AM
Hi there!
On a beach walk at North Beach of the Queen Charlotte Islands (South of Alaska) my daughter and me found washed up squid egg sacks. She put them in a bucket with seawater and a bubbler. surprisingly they hatched and tiny transparent-white squid are swimming in the bucket now. How can we find out what kind they are? Theyôre so tiny, we canôt tell the number of arms legs etc.... What might they want to eat?
What is artemia and where can it be found?
Do you think we can keep a few in a small tank and just keep giving them fresh oceanwater daily?
any other suggestions?
The squids are so beautiful....
Thanks for your help!
[quote name='inky' post='2393' date='May 31 2004, 05:07 PM']I've been doing squid research for the last couple of years and this has involved keeping squid in captivity. From my experience, squid are quite touchy about water quality, though no more so than many scale fish. However they are vulnerable to damage from contact with tank walls etc. and do require live food. In a community tank they may be problematic as they will take fish up to 1.5 times their bodylength and will be eaten by things bigger than this. I have successfully kept southern calamari (Sepioteuthis australis) though with very high mortality rates by hatching eggs collected from the wild, with some animals living for up to 6 months (6-8month life cycle). However they never reached the size of comparable aged wild animals. These animals were fed artemia, mysid shrimp and palaemonas shrimp and kept in a 4000L recirc system. With considerably more success I have kept southern dumpling squid (Euprymna tasmanica), these are a hardy species ideally suited to captivity and will take many different crustaceans though we mainly use mysids for small animals and shrimp for larger. They are pretty cool in a tank and they like to bury themselves or coat themselves with sand. Also they fluoresce in the dark which is kinda cool. The are best obtained by wading, diving or snorkelling over a shallow subtidal sandflat at night, finding them with a spotlight and scooping with a net. They appear fluro green in the water and are about the size of a golf ball or less and will be sitting on the bottom. I reckon this species would be good in a home aquarium though again not with other animals as they are loaded with vibrio bacteria which can be pathogenic to fish (this is what makes them glow). The other species I have played with is Ideosepius pygmaeus the southern pigmy squid, these can be found amongst drift algae, only grow to a few cm in length and can be fed on artemia.
Good luck to all who try and let me know how you go.
Cheers
Inky.[/quote]
On a beach walk at North Beach of the Queen Charlotte Islands (South of Alaska) my daughter and me found washed up squid egg sacks. She put them in a bucket with seawater and a bubbler. surprisingly they hatched and tiny transparent-white squid are swimming in the bucket now. How can we find out what kind they are? Theyôre so tiny, we canôt tell the number of arms legs etc.... What might they want to eat?
What is artemia and where can it be found?
Do you think we can keep a few in a small tank and just keep giving them fresh oceanwater daily?
any other suggestions?
The squids are so beautiful....
Thanks for your help!
[quote name='inky' post='2393' date='May 31 2004, 05:07 PM']I've been doing squid research for the last couple of years and this has involved keeping squid in captivity. From my experience, squid are quite touchy about water quality, though no more so than many scale fish. However they are vulnerable to damage from contact with tank walls etc. and do require live food. In a community tank they may be problematic as they will take fish up to 1.5 times their bodylength and will be eaten by things bigger than this. I have successfully kept southern calamari (Sepioteuthis australis) though with very high mortality rates by hatching eggs collected from the wild, with some animals living for up to 6 months (6-8month life cycle). However they never reached the size of comparable aged wild animals. These animals were fed artemia, mysid shrimp and palaemonas shrimp and kept in a 4000L recirc system. With considerably more success I have kept southern dumpling squid (Euprymna tasmanica), these are a hardy species ideally suited to captivity and will take many different crustaceans though we mainly use mysids for small animals and shrimp for larger. They are pretty cool in a tank and they like to bury themselves or coat themselves with sand. Also they fluoresce in the dark which is kinda cool. The are best obtained by wading, diving or snorkelling over a shallow subtidal sandflat at night, finding them with a spotlight and scooping with a net. They appear fluro green in the water and are about the size of a golf ball or less and will be sitting on the bottom. I reckon this species would be good in a home aquarium though again not with other animals as they are loaded with vibrio bacteria which can be pathogenic to fish (this is what makes them glow). The other species I have played with is Ideosepius pygmaeus the southern pigmy squid, these can be found amongst drift algae, only grow to a few cm in length and can be fed on artemia.
Good luck to all who try and let me know how you go.
Cheers
Inky.[/quote]