Octopus for my Aquarium

It'd be great if you could share .

Oh crap I totally forgot. Wow now I got to come up with a new idea. Hopefully I dont forget this time lol

Share!

Okay well I couldnt remember the idea I had...Just that I had one...Anyway I guess you would always build a octo tight wall of rock and do another area for him like a dual tank. Be hard but kool :/ Wish I had better My question is how did doctors and stuff used to have them in there tanks back in the day? I know that was like 10 years ago but.

That actually gave me a good idea! Have 1/3 of the divider between the octo section and community section a rock wall and then the remaining 2/3 can be a removable glass wall with holes large enough for circulation but small enough that it can't squeeze through!

Or you could just lean the rocks against a 3/3 glass wall. That might be easier.

Possibly, but then that would defeat the hole purpose since I wouldn't be able to make it removable, if I ever wanted to merge the sides.

PF, you're kidding your self. IF you have an octopus you need to have a tank that is totally sealed on all sided. Only screen or glass. How big an octopus are you talking?

The only hard part on an octo is the beak. That sets the size of what it can and will get through. And an octopus will go over and around anything you make. you will have to devide your hood and your lighting in half so that there is no place you could shove a tic tac.

All that work, just get a 10 gal with a good lid and some duct tape. Run lines in and out of your main tank. You don't need separate filtration.

That's really good reasoning Michael. +1

Oh please! It's not that hard. The holes will be minute in size. Definitely larger than the beak. Yes the top will be totally sealed. If this aquarium is ever going to get done it's going to be done the way I want it, after all, I have to live with it haha.

Dividing the lighting and sealing off the hood doesn't sound so easy to me... unless you make the entire thing from raw materials.

Well I wouldn't need to divide lighting. Just the hood. Yes it is a custom made tank that we are talking about. I should do a sketch and show you guys.

Yes, you should.

I really like cephs now thanks to you. I've been spending every moment of free time I have reading up on them (mostly on TONMO) or watching videos of them / a documentary. You should really be ashamed~! 'Specially since I have no means to obtain one.

Um... /end rant

Brent, do you have cuttlefish there? They are as or more smart than octos.

As far as I know, we don't. Maybe some deep sea species but nothing viable as a pet.

Mail order an octopus. Bet a live seafood vendor will send cheap. Korean eat it LIVE!

Check a Korean seafood market!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFWnSS5D2kw&NR=1

lol that's weird...

Cuttlefish only live for 6 months so it's really hard to keep them.

I've been keeping octopus bimaculoides (California two spot octopus) for over two years. I caught them myself in San Diego, so they're a temperate species. Mine get along well with gorgonians, strawberry anemone, solitary anemone, bat stars, and brittle stars. They avoided eating a few species for a very long time: tidepool sculpin, red rock shrimp. It took four of five months to figure out how to catch three small opeleye, but most other things are out. The vast majority of octopus that you can buy are warm water species, because there's very little market for the temperate ones, although I find them easy to catch, so if you live where they live you can get them that way. Anemones are like cactus plants to an octopus, so the tank needs to be large enough so that the octopus can easily avoid touching the anemone, and still have plenty of room to move around. There are a lot of things I'd love to keep, but the octopus limits that a lot. I'm planning to set up a second tank for everything else, and keep the octopus tank primarily for the octopus.

A good rule of thumb is to assume that an octopus can get through any hole larger than it's eyeball. If you want to keep a temperate octopus, it'll probably be a bimac (O. Bimaculoides), and you'll either need to catch one yourself, or get someone to catch one and give it to you. A full grown bimac needs at least a 50 gallon tank - bigger if you take up space with gorgonians or anemones. And you'll need a tight fitting (latching?) lid to prevent escapes. You can learn all you need about octopus on Tonmo.com (that's where I learned).

Do lots of homework and tank design/prep before you get an octopus. It's been worth it for me, but it's a challenge, and will limit your options for tank mates.

BTW - cowries are not compatible with octopus. The octopus will attach the cowrie, and the cowrie will turn many cups of tank water into gelatinous slime, which can easily block overflows, and cause a flood. I learned that one the hard way (no flood, but almost, and the cowrie was 1" long. An adult cowrie would have been a disaster!)

Great post C-Rad!

Here commercial crab fishers catch octopus as by-catch. That is where I hope to get mine.

What size do you tank do you keep him in?

I keep the adult in a 60 gallon tank, that actually contains about 50 gallons of water, plus rocks and sand (30" x 18" x 25"). That's about the minimum that I can get away with. He has a mantle (head bag) that is about 5" long, and legs that are about 16" long. I also have a baby bimac (1.5" mantle" 2.75" legs) that I'm keeping in a 4 gallon "tank" (an acrylic waste basket that I drilled). The little tank is sitting on top of my big tank, and I just use a small pump to pump water from my overflow, up into the little tank. Then I let the water overflow out a screened bulkhead and go back into the big tank, so I don't need any additional chiller of filtration for the small tank. It just piggy-backs on the main tank.

that is much the same way I had in mind. A small tank that lives off the large. I'm having a hard time devising a method of running the water so that I can set the tank beside the large one, but I'm having trouble coming up with something simple.

that is much the same way I had in mind. A small tank that lives off the large. I'm having a hard time devising a method of running the water so that I can set the tank beside the large one, but I'm having trouble coming up with something simple.

Only way I could figure out how to get multiple tanks together was via a sump.

True.