Hi, This will be my first Cephalopd tank. The tank is an established 1 year reef tank. I have removed potentail stinging corals for the the octo's saftey. I will be Picking up my octopus later today or tomorrow. all i know is it will be a mid atlantic species. I havent decided on a name but for right now i will just call him "Little Chef" So here are a few pic's of the tank he/she/it will be staying in :)

FTS -

http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc81/ChefReef/Octo%20tank/002.jpg

Couple zoa's -

http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc81/ChefReef/Octo%20tank/003.jpg

A little cave i hope Little Chef will use -

http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc81/ChefReef/Octo%20tank/005.jpg

Where i think i will keep his foo. I think im going to keep it in his tank as some sort of activity. Right now there are only a few snails in the holding cell :P but there are a bunch of crabs roaming the tank and some large crabs in the sump in case i end up with a larger octo (hopefully not).

http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc81/ChefReef/Octo%20tank/007.jpg

Here is the lid to help keep him in. It's basicaly one of those zoomed steel screen tops that i cut holes in to put the overflow and return through.

http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc81/ChefReef/Octo%20tank/009.jpg

http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc81/ChefReef/Octo%20tank/011.jpg

http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc81/ChefReef/Octo%20tank/013.jpg

http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc81/ChefReef/Octo%20tank/019.jpg

http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc81/ChefReef/Octo%20tank/021.jpg


In the sump there is a ASM - G3 skimmer as well as a phosban with carbon.


On my way now to go see what octo they got in for me. :wink:

Duct tape is your friend. You will want to close the gaps between the screen and your overflow and return.

isnt really a gap on the return but i will for the overflow. will duct tape handle the heat?

looking good man. i like your huge colony of zoos. Where did you get your lid or did you make it? size of the tank? pic of the sump?

Thank! :)

Size of the tank is a 55 gal.

The lid is a basic reptile lip from zoo med made for a 55 tank. they have em range from 10 - 90 gal tanks. i just cut some of the steel mesh out with a knife.

I will take a pic of the sump in a few days once i clean up under there :P I have alot of random stuff that i can't seem to find a home for that i am trying to get rid of to clear up space.

A little more detail on the sump though.
It is a 30 gal oceanic AGA that i turned into a sump, it used to be my old tank before i upgraded to the 55. I have it set up so the overflow drains into a filter sock that i clean once a week. There is an additional 20+lbs of LR in the sump, mostely becuase i have no where else to put it and would like to keep it live. it also gives my two large crabs a home for the time being untill the octo eats it, that is if the octo can eat them. It has a ASM - G3 skimmer that pulls out pure black gunk (when i had fish). Also have a "Two little fishes" phosban reactor setup with carbon. and it is returned by a Rio 2500, which i plan to upgrade to a ehiem 1262 later on. I also plan on getting another phosban reactor for some GFO. At the moment i do not have a fuge but maybe when i get a bigger sump later down the road i will make it to include a fuge.

Well fr the time being i will have to wait on Little Chef. All of these "suppliers" are not supplying after they promis this and that and promise on this date and that. It's a little harder than i thought finding the right octo. Hopefully some time next week or the weekend i will get one. Will keep you updated. :)

Where are you ordering from? That's a good setup. I was actually looking into a different skimmer for mine because it's powered by a rio2100 and they have a tendency to self destruct. I didn't want reef to crash so i'm looking into the ASM G series. I'd like a mesh modded 3. Is yours modded? have you used any others like a 2 or 1?

Iv been trying to go through LFS's. i figured they should be able to get them rather easy becuase i live in south florida. they are common to see in the stores but the ones i have seen just are not what im looking for.

I really like the asm's. Mine is not modded for a few reasons. the mesh mod iv heard good and bad things about. mostely having to clean the mesh like every month which i know i just wont do. the good out weighs the bad though. i jsut dont want to have to take apart the pump to clean it :/. I have tried the G-1 before. it is ok for a smaller tank. my father-in-law also uses the ASM G-1 or ASM mini, i can't remember, on his custom 40 gal with 10 gal sump. its pretty heavy stocked and he has no problems. Me personaly i could see myself with anything less then the G-3 on this tank. im too inpressed with it :P. That and i had to custom build my stand becuase none of the store bought ones could house this big thing, It's pretty tall.

If you did mod it i wod do the gate valve mod, and the mesh mod if you dont mind cleaning it. Also to do the recirc mod. if you do that you will have a BEAST of a skimmer. I just havnt got around to doing that with mine yet. i plan on adding another 1 or 2 sedra's to it.

Nice tank, I'm sure the octo will love it.

I hope so. :)

Well, no octo yet but I did replace the Koralia 3 (on the right) with a Vortech MP40W tonight :D. I still have the Koralia 4 on the left side though. Man that thing is awesome.. That's about it for updates so far, unless you wanna hear about my average, pretty boring, routine water change i just did :P

I really like that little food container thing. :) Only problem is that you might tempt your octo to see the food and his mouth will start watering then he will try to break into it lol. I dunno. :)

he should be able to push up the screen a little to get in the container, which is fine becuase then he can eat when he wants and doesnt have to worry about his food hidding or escaping :). there will be a few critters running wild though but most his food will be in this "holding cell".

Yeah, thats pretty cool. I might even think about getting something like that for my tank. :)

Little Chef is here!! He/she is being acclimated right now. i will take pictures later tonight or tomorrow. i have to go to class now and wont be back for 6 hours. i have the drip going really slow so hopefully it doesnt fill up before i get home. he is in a large critter keeper right now and my wife will keep an eye on it. i told here what to do if anything goes wrong or it fills up before i get back. now i just have to cross my fingers.

He was labbled "octopus" at the LFS... go figure. but he is a light brown with some interesting paterns but also changes to a solid darker brown with no paterens. It also eyes eye spots. and is about the size of my fist. ( im 6'4") to give you an idea of my fist. i cant see the mantle yet so couldn't tell you that. I hope people here will be able to identify him. also i live in south florida but i have no idea where it was colected. i really dislike the LFS i was at and normally don't buy livestock from them so hopefully everything works out.

Congratulations on the new octopus!!! :)

congrats man check out my setup when you get a chance. fa sho.

will do. I'm at school now and have a few mins before class, will give it a look. get pics yet of your sump?

:welcome: Little Chef!

:welcome: little one!

Looking at octane's journal i think it looks alot like O. Hummelincki. But when I get pics hopefully it will help. I bet it is a O. Hummelincki.

I was just about to post O.hummelincki as a "pre-picture" guess based upon your location and the eye spots. Can you PM me contact info for your LSF? His size is worrisome but 'Tane was large on arrival (not as big as Neal's hand though - also 6'4" - but he has/had very big hands - left hand somewhat dimished as of 4 weeks ago :sad:).

Post #79 on page 4 (http://www.tonmo.com/forums/showthread.php?t=12191&page=4) of Octane's thread shows most of the markings you should be able to find. Look for the orange ring around the blue eye spot (eye spot not always visible but usually disernable), a brown stripe of connected dots running from the head, across the eye and extending into the mantle, purple rings on the suckers and a slight skin pigtail when not showing cripsis (I think this is where the extra skin is gathered for the smooth look). The brown stripe is almost always visible but not always well defined. There is also a a second false eye above the real eye that is often a brownish orange. You will see a very clear display of these markings in the last photo on the afore mentioned post.

If your experience is half of mine, you will fall in love with this animal.

can you tell me a bit about their personality? are they active in the day or night? typical foods? I will look more closely on the markings when i get home. i only saw it for a breif moment before i had to leave for class.

wow i just looked at those photos and that octo is beautifull.

wow i just looked at those photos and that octo is beautifull.

You betcha :grin: with an even better personality!

They are diurnal and sleep all night.

As for personality, I don't paraphrase well :wink:. Take some time to read some of the entries in my journal and watch some of the videos after you finish your homework (or if it starts putting you to sleep - I remember taking night classes and working days - for 7 years - :sleeping:).

Im gonna go with a def O.hummelincki . everything you mentioned it has. from the blue eye spot with the orange ring around it to the orange eyespots above the eye. the suckers look a little purple color and he does have brown srtips running up his head. I am uploading pictures now but man you can't see anything in these pictures. but again I'm almost positive it is a O.hummelincki

Here are the pics, this is the best i could do tonight. i will try again in the morning when i have good lighting in the house. I doubt you will be able to ID him from these.

http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc81/ChefReef/Octo%20tank/001.jpg

http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc81/ChefReef/Octo%20tank/002-1.jpg

http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc81/ChefReef/Octo%20tank/003-1.jpg

http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc81/ChefReef/Octo%20tank/004.jpg

http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc81/ChefReef/Octo%20tank/005-1.jpg

http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc81/ChefReef/Octo%20tank/008.jpg

http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc81/ChefReef/Octo%20tank/007-1.jpg

http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc81/ChefReef/Octo%20tank/006.jpg

wow those look even worse when they are blown up.. the critter keeper is now floating in the tank. He turned colors when i moved the cage to the tank and looked exactly like dwhatley's avatar

Also here is a pic of my sump. it's a mess right now and i don't have baffles but i should. just never got around to doing it.

http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc81/ChefReef/Octo%20tank/014.jpg

If he is still in his critter keeper, I would suggest you let him out so he can find a comfortable den. Stress is very harmful and not being able to sleep in the dark seems to effect them. We kept a red night light on the tank for a long time. Every now and then I would notice that Octane was up and about in the middle of the night. Eventually, I put two and two together and realized that every time the power would go out, the night light would revert to white light and would shine in his sleeping quarters. The red light did not bother him. We removed the light since we seem to be having an abnormal amount of quick power outages and the white light obviously distressed him.

I grabbed a few more pics that came out better. I figured while he was awake and the lights were still on i would take a few more pics of him inside the tank. The last picture is to show him and the whole tank to show size.

http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc81/ChefReef/Octo%20tank/021-1.jpg

http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc81/ChefReef/Octo%20tank/029.jpg

http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc81/ChefReef/Octo%20tank/028.jpg

http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc81/ChefReef/Octo%20tank/027.jpg

http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc81/ChefReef/Octo%20tank/022-1.jpg

http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc81/ChefReef/Octo%20tank/023.jpg

http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc81/ChefReef/Octo%20tank/024.jpg

http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc81/ChefReef/Octo%20tank/025.jpg

http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc81/ChefReef/Octo%20tank/026.jpg

If my prospective is right, he looks close to the size of Octane when he first came to our tank (see "I AM A ROCK" video/pictures at front of thread).

Do you have somewhere else to put that anemone that is in the bottom left? Long tenticled critters tend to be a problem and I had to move some of my polyps with Octane (he reacted negatively when he touched them but others were fine). I am worried about the sting causing possible leisons.

If you have any raw shrimp, you might try stick feeding as sometimes they will eat out of nerveousness the first day but might not eat for a couple of days while adjusting. If you can get him to eat now, he will at least have a full belly before the likely fast. Try touching the shrimp as close to the mouth as he will let you but move slowly. We found with Octane that his suckers seemed to be most food sensitive close to the mouth and that if he shoved the food away, he would not eat it later so one slow attempt is best.

ATM i dont not have a spot to move then nem, i have another tank but the lights cannot support it so as soon as i get lights on that tank i wil move it. I tried feeding but he wouldn't have at it. maybe i will try tomorrow putting it closer to his mouth. but it is a O.hummelincki right?

That would be my guess and I would like to see if your supplier can get another and will ship it to GA. We are so depresses looking at the empty tank and the diver that found 'Tane does not normally find or collect octopuses. He just happened on this one and caught him for me because I had written him with a request. In 7 months he has not come upon another.

It seems your camera has a similar problem to mine in that it does not auto focus very well when trying to shoot a close up segment of the aquarium but does a good job if you back up (Neal is Xmas shopping for one like AM's and has already bought the underwater housing for my birthday but not the camera :roll:). You might try backing up somewhere between the nice full tank shot and the unfocused close ups and then cropping the picture and enlarging if your pixle count is relatively high. The bad part is I love all the features of my current camera but 90 percent of my use is to take aquarium pictures (the new one has both an underwater and an aquarium mode :grin: and the minute AM got his several of us asked what he bought without being told he had a new camera).

I believe tube anemone's actually aren't photosynthetic... FYI.

How rude of me...

Congratulations on your new friend. Looks like a winner! Hope you have many months of fun together.

AM - I will look into that, i was told i need good lights to keep it. maybe the guy was thinking of the RBTA when i asked him becuase we were just talking about one.

I believe little chef ate today. one of my new snail's shell lays empty on the sand bed. it has a unique shell so i know its not an old one. i just wish i coulda saw it eat :roll:

Well he ate again last night. this time the wife saw him eat.

I noticed some cool color patterens last night when i got home as well. He was cruisin the tank and he turned his tenticals a bright yellow - orange color, and kept the rest of his body a dark brown almost pruple tint to it. and looked really cool becuase his suckers are purple so the orange just stood out so much. Also he was doing this thing that reminded me of two face from batman becuase he would "flash" colors on his head. It would be full white on one side and full dark brown on the other side of his head. I wish i had my cammera on me for that, but im quite sure i will see it again. He is so fun to watch. checking every hole with his arms and i saw him swim accorss the tank as well that was really cool. he looked like a cuttle when he did it :P

Sounds like you're in love! :)

lol can you tell? is it really that obvious. I'v been hit by the octo love arrow :P

(that sounded dumb)

Also today i got to HAND feed him. i offered another one of those snails to him and he reached out and grabbed me, crawled over and took it, then hopped down and ate him. First time i got to see him eat. as soon as he was done he grabbed another that was near by.. poor guy was just cleaning the glass :P

We hand fed Octane 90% of the time. Occassionally, Neal would not be willing to wait for him to decide he was hungry and would use the feeding stick but most days Octane just came to the top and flopped over so Neal could put the shrimp on his beak - sooo lazy! If Octane was typical (I have found a few outside posts that suggest he was), he will initiate contact more and more often as he trusts you. On occassion he would stick to a finger and pull. This is the only time I did not let him do as he wanted with my hand. When he wanted to swim or climb on me, I allowed it as long as he was not trying to pull my hand down into the tank. Other than the brief tugging, he was extremely gentle and wanted to be handled likewise, just the barest of touches but he kept coming back for and for longer durations.

I got some pretty cool pics and a vid that i am uploading now. i will post em in a few. ;)

http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc81/ChefReef/Octo%20tank/5178d9e5.jpg

http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc81/ChefReef/Octo%20tank/cf10a88e.jpg

http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc81/ChefReef/Octo%20tank/51b9ddbb.jpg

http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc81/ChefReef/Octo%20tank/7987abd5.jpg

http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc81/ChefReef/Octo%20tank/f9a3c3a1.jpg

http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc81/ChefReef/Octo%20tank/38b18531.jpg

And video of him playing with his holding cell.

http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc81/ChefReef/Octo%20tank/th_78dbc491.jpg (http://s216.photobucket.com/albums/cc81/ChefReef/Octo%20tank/?action=view&current=78dbc491.flv)

It's funny he got one snail out and then carried it with him the whole time he was trying to get more out of the cell. I also tried zooming in at one point when he tore a one of the crabs pinchers off and pulled it into his mouth. You can briefly see a green arm in his mouth. I think i may need to drill a few more holes in this box or make them a little bigger. Surprisingly he never went threw the top of the box like i thought he would. I figured he would just squeeze himself into the box and eat em. He really liked the emerald crabs though.

I love the video! I have been thinking hummelincki may not compress themselves like other octos that have been videoed (GHolland's (http://www.tonmo.com/forums/showthread.php?t=12919&page=5) recent merc adventures. It will be interesting to see if he does eventually go inside. You may want to take some sandpaper to the holes so that there are no sharp edges as drilled acrylic can be very sharp (one expensive skimmer pump lost - almost an electrical disaster - makes me very aware of this problem)

I bet in time he will go in, this is his first incounter with this box so far. He has also been sleeping on the wall by the vortech since i recieved him and tonight he finnaly found a new spot to sleep withing the rock work. Home sweet den :)

Thanks for the advise about sanding it, i will do it when i drill a few more holes in it this weekend.

Today I experimented with using an emory board for acrylic nails and it did a decent quick job of taking off a rough edge for a support that would not be seen. For the holes, however, probably just making a circle of sand paper and pulling it through several times should work (wrapping it in a pencil or something similar might make it quicker if the holes are big enough.