The ink is an important issue to be dealt with in their captive maintenance, because they can increase grey colouration and can foul gills13. Nabhitabhata and Nilaphat14 provided sand and gravel to assist the animal in burrowing while no substrate was provided in the present study. The animals did not show a change in their behaviour though there was an absence of substrate.
Rectangular tanks were easy to maintain as in the present experiment. But Boletzky and Hanlon5 stated that round tanks eliminate areas of stagnant circulation and corner crowding while Oestmann et al.,13 have mentioned that the circular tanks are not space efficient. The rectangular tanks solve both the problems because there was no corner crowding and the space was sufficient enough for the culture. If irritated, the cuttlefish shoot backwards by jet propulsion and can eject ink shortly after hatching15. This can result in fin damage as they hit against the wall of the culture tanks. Some of the Paralarvae that hatched out from the wild spawned eggs were released after 10 days of culture from the lab to the sea. They did not exhibit any aggregating behaviour when released in the sea but preferred to be isolated from each other as explained by Hanlon and Messenger16and this confirms with the earlier findings that cuttlefishes prefer a solitary life.
A major limitation in culturing larger number of cephalopods has been providing the proper nutrition. Live feeds are expensive because of the time and equipment required as well as personnel to collect and maintain them17. This problem was not faced in the present study except for the time spent by the lab personnel to collect the mysids from the nearby mangrove area. For a larger scale culture, supply of live feed becomes very difficult unless and until there is a hatchery nearby. There are few reports on