Products Options

I've added 9 options on openart 2.3.0.2 and when I go to the product, and add these option i then add in the various select drop downs.
However, after populating 3 of the options and then saving, half my options then disappear!
It almost seems that that it cannot list or save back correctly. Luckily, i made a copy of the product with all 9 options, in and 3 of them fully populated. After trying to populate the 4th one and saving, going back to the product shows some options have disappeared again.

an anyone advise on this, and also is the is bug. I'm new to opencart, and the actual website is a live site, selling gift baskets. The product i'm trying to configure is a custom gift basket where customers select 9 items to fill the basket.