Cuttlefish, The Best Pet Cephalopod?

[Music] well hi there in our video about giant centipedes you guys let us know that you would like to see a video about octopus that's going to happen so subscribe and click the little bell so that you don't miss it but this might be an even cooler cephalopod cephalopods are among the raddest animals on the planet octopus are incredible intelligent fascinating masters of camouflage that absolutely captivate me squid are rad in that they have turned the same tentacled jet-powered body plan into a sort of missile but often overlooked but again possibly the coolest of them all are the cuttlefish cuttlefish like other cephalopods are mollusks and mollusks are characterized by possessing a muscular foot in this case tentacles and a mantle that houses their gills or lungs and secretes a shell in the nautiloids that shell is still very apparent in the octopus the shell has been lost entirely squid have only a very thin stiffening rod of a shell that is inside of the mantle itself and it's actually very similar in the cuttlefish except that the shell is proportionally much larger you actually often see the internal shell of cuttlefish sold at pet shops as cuddle bone though technically it's shell cuddle shell cephalopods also push water out of their muscular mantle through a siphon that they can use to generate jet propulsion no big deal squid are especially good at this cuttlefish can really move when they need to and they can use that jet propulsion as well but that isn't their primary form of locomotion what they normally use are undulations of the fringe of their mantle but speed isn't the only tool in their arsenal not at all these guys are the masters of camouflage only the octopus can rival them they make chameleons and leaf-tailed geckos look like they aren't even trying these guys can change not only their color but their texture to match the environment confuse predators and pray and communicate with one another and with you that is if you were smart enough to understand their language because they are talking to you they have an enormous range of colors that they can produce by expanding and contracting various pigmented and reflective sacks in their skin they do this constantly based upon what they see in the environment around them and as a cephalopod they have camera style eyes like vertebrates but with a completely different origin and that arguably work even better and their brain is absolutely next level among invertebrates only the octopus can rival them how smart are they we don't even know this is an alien they come from another world we simply have no idea what is going on in their head feet but we know it's a lot check out our video on rad facts about tegus for more of my thoughts on this needless to say dolphins are unimpressed with our intelligence but it's hard to say that i could be much more impressed with any animal than i am with cuttlefish so is it a good pet and is the cuttlefish the best pet cephalopod for you in order to help you figure this out we are going to score the cuttlefish based on our five categories which are handleability care hardiness availability and upfront costs when it comes to handle ability we give the cuttlefish a score of three out of five to be honest i'm probably scoring how well it handles you more than how you handle it for an animal that needs to stay as much as possible in the water these are pretty amazing if you have the nerve like all cephalopods they do have a beak and it seems that many do produce a mild venom though i do not know of any that have a medically significant bite around the beak they also have an impressive array of tentacles most are just covered in grippy grippy suction cups that they can use to hold on to you and inspect you and give you a little taste but they also have a pair that they can shoot out like a chameleon tongue to grab you or food this can be a really cool experience but it is a bit much for people like me that don't like pillsbury products especially when the pillsbury products pop then grab you with powerful tentacles and pull you towards a venomous beak those are my least favorite pillsbury products and that gives me an opportunity to talk about becoming a rad fan or a stinking rad fan at patreon did you know that jason made a whole video where he made me open pillsbury products just because he loves our patrons more than he loves me and if you join patreon today not only are you supporting more content like today's video you can also watch that terrible video and over a hundred other bonus videos so pop on over there and check it out but back to cuttlefish they don't cuddle and they aren't fish but they are very smart and they can differentiate between you and food they can be hand fed you can even let them inspect you with their tentacles for me it seems a bit like handling tarantulas it can be done but it seems kind of freaky and unnecessary but again it can be done and even if you do not touch them they are simply on another level when it comes to being interactive when it comes to care we give the cuttlefish a score of two out of five for a pet a cuttlefish is not easy i wouldn't recommend them as your first saltwater experience but it is pretty doable if you know some basic salt water keeping skills you need to cycle the tank for the same reason that you need to cycle a fresh water tank we discussed this in great detail in our video on freshwater stingrays so go ahead and check that out in saltwater you often use live rock to help establish the colonies of microorganisms that you will need to control ammonia and nitrite you will still need to perform water changes to control nitrate and after water changes you need to add salt water to the tank but you probably don't have access to salt water the water that comes out of your tap is chemical-laden fresh water this turns live cuttlefish into dead cuttlefish you need to condition the water to remove the chemicals and you need to add salt you can't add just any old salt that too will kill them use something like instant ocean salt we'll have a link to that down in the description make sure to test the salinity of your water before introducing it to fish or cuttlefish which are not fish and don't cuddle now this is important you will need to add salt when you first fill your tank and when you do a water change but not when you are adding water to replace water that has evaporated salt doesn't evaporate so the salt that you added before will still be in there this is why lakes that don't drain become salt lakes water with a bit of salt goes in but the only water that leaves does so by evaporation and the salt stays almost nothing can survive in a salt lake including but not limited to cuttlefish don't try to raise a cuttlefish in a salt lake your tank will also need excellent filtration and proper temperatures that will depend on the exact species that you keep you may need to heat the water in addition to water changes to remove nitrate you may need to perform an emergency water change if the cuttlefish ever releases its ink into the water the ink is not going to kill you when you release it into the ocean but it just might when you live in a small aquarium and copper this is a cephalopod specific issue cephalopods are very sensitive to copper test your water do you have copper pipes goldfish are also often treated with copper so don't use them as feeders and this gets us to feeding we're here today at the loveland living planet aquarium in draper utah and they have been kind enough not only to let us film their amazing cuttlefish but also these sharks would you like to see a video about sharks on this channel in the future now i often have a season pass to this aquarium because it is amazing and you can come and see many of the animals be fed i have been obsessed with their cuttlefish for a long time perhaps since the first time i saw them feed and today i got to see it again amazing i totally recommend this aquarium they have at least 100 enclosures that i would dream to have in my home and that i would watch for hours at a time if you're ever in the area come here come to the lovely living planet aquarium in draper utah now when it comes to feeding cuttlefish they're carnivores as juveniles they may only take live prey and they eat a lot for their size crustaceans and fish will form the majority of their diet you can use frozen thought marine invertebrates and fish you just may need to swim them around a little bit to get your cuttlefish's attention sort of like feeding frozen thawed rodents to a snake use a lot of diversity of feeders cuttlefish unlike octopus can do well in groups of like-sized individuals but males may fight so watch out for that and don't try to put anything else in the tank that you don't intend to end up inside of a cuttlefish because they can be such voracious and messy feeders be sure to use a really good filter and a protein skimmer one very nice thing about cuttlefish is that they can be housed appropriately in commercially available aquaria the exact size will depend on the species that you get but it is something that you can buy in any decent aquarium supply store do make sure that it has a good lid so you don't have one jump or climb out but one big benefit of that internal shell is that unlike octopus cuttlefish can't fit through shockingly small holes when it comes to hardiness we give the cuttlefish a score of two out of five getting eggs to hatch and hatchlings up to a decent size can be a bit tricky but if you get them at a larger size and provide a well-cycled filtered and treated tank they should live out their lives that said there must be something about being able to change your color and shoot out part of your body to catch prey because like chameleons they live fast and die young most cuttlefish will live from one to two years and that is from hatching to death there are also just a lot of things that can go wrong with water quality that could lead to an early death be careful about nitrogenous waste and copper especially and just know that even under the best of circumstances this relationship wasn't meant to last even rat owners feel sorry for you when it comes to availability we give the cuttlefish a score of two out of five cuttlefish are not native to the americas so they're less common in the americas than they are in most of the rest of the world they also don't ship very well after they hatch and this is all great because it means that most of them that you will see are captive bred people that keep cuttlefish generally learn to propagate them like annual plants because they live their lives like annual plants this also means that they generally produce more than they want to keep lucky you you're not going to see them for sale at pet shops or expos but you can find them online if you know what you're doing you can get eggs and those ship pretty well you just need to know how to care for the eggs and for the hatchlings if you do not you can get established juveniles just know that the clock has already begun to tick with them if you want a cuttlefish you can have eggs or juveniles at your door way faster than you can get a tank properly established for them when it comes to upfront costs we give the cuttlefish a score of three out of five you're gonna pay more for shipping than you do for the actual cuttlefish they're very affordable the tank will be where your expenses will lie that said this is one of the more affordable salt water tanks that you can get you will also need some substrate filters a protein skimmer maybe a heater live rock salt water conditioner water quality testing equipment a good lid but not an octopus level houdini lid and some frozen seafood gumbo so good and this is why overall we give the cuttlefish a score of 2.4 out of 5. this isn't an octopus but it might be even better it is comparably intelligent inquisitive and impressively incognito but they're more active and easier to contain and it's still a space alien if what you want is an otherworldly intelligent life form that is trying to tell you something that you are too stupid to understand and you can live with the fact that you have at most two years to figure it out then the cuttlefish might be the perfect pet cephalopod for you the truth is that it isn't going to get any better than this as always like and subscribe if you want to be sure to catch the octopus video when it comes out click the little bell and we hope to see you real soon the rodent dance right this is the fish dance so pop on over there and check it out scared the fish i skipped that's amazing through six inches of glass they don't like pillsbury products either two years to figure it out then the cuttlefish might be the perfect pet cephalo dang it know so many syllables okay then the cuttlefish might be the perfect pet cephalopod for you nailed it oh you scared him again sorry fishes shouldn't be so excited zero outside i gotta be as calm as i was on kaboon viper day yes

Channel: Clint's Reptiles

Views: 343,793

Keywords: Cuttlefish, Octopus, Squid, pet cuttlefish, cuttlefish care, octopus the best pet, saltwater keeping, saltwater tank, shark, cephalopod, cuttlefish changing colors, camouflage, cuttlefish eating, chameleon, freshwater stingray, arowana, pet, aquarium, keeping saltwater, mollusk, cuttlebone, blacktip reef shark, king cobra, vinegaroon, dragon snake, Clint's Reptiles, loveland living planet aquarium, pet squid, pet octopus, saltwater fish, exotic pet, snake discovery, nautulus, snake, lizard

Id: FrmUNyrr1zE

Length: 13min 47sec (827 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 16 2021