In what order do you feed the octopus. (bimic) Does it go.....

Baby= clams
Older baby= the shrimp and clams
juvi= small fiddlers and shimp
adult= thawed shrimp fiddlers and.......

Please tell me what i missed or correct me thanks.

:smile:

That's pretty good although I've fed those tiny blue leg hermits to babies along with frozen prawn. I am lucky that I can collect my own food, so there are a variety of different sizes I can progress to. The clams from Octopets seems to be the best first food as they are used to them. Variety is the key and size related food as something too big could injure a baby.

Yes and i understand that so I really dont whant to jump the gun on it so I know what to feed him and at what time if his life. I will also try to give him a good variety of food but that brings me to more questions what do I feed his food seeing as I will be buying larg quantites.

Yes and i understand that so I really dont whant to jump the gun on it so I know what to feed him and at what time if his life. I will also try to give him a good variety of food but that brings me to more questions what do I feed his food seeing as I will be buying larg quantites.

If you researched on what to feed octo's in it's different stages of life, you'll know that they of course must be fed a variety of meals to maintain a good level of protein and a healthy life. For your question of buying larger quanities...im assuming you mean, for a the larger growing octo. I would say feed it what they should be fed which consists of small mollusks, frozen shrimp, live crabs if you can find them, clams, mussels, mabye even lobster if it's not harmful and not too large. For the smaller octopus thats about a month old, feed it a variety of foods as well but in smaller quanities and sizes. Baby shrimp and frozen shrimps are great. Clams are fine as well as hermit crabs.

But please, before you purchase your octo, keep us informed on whats up next and how much you have progressed in research and knowledge. Oh, and remember to mature your tank for at least 3 months before adding an octo in.

yes im aware of all that I'm just making sure I can provide the food as in diffrent things witch I can and I will have the tank in about a month and I will have the supplies in another then I will begin to cycle the tank and when the tank is cycleing do you still do water changes to keep the salt balanced or do you just let it cycle all the way threw and when you put the salt water in do you have all the items in there and im still confused on these critter cages I mean are you talking about those small cages that are like half a gallon and if you are then do you put them in the larger cage and if you do that two how doese the water cycle threw them???????

yes im aware of all that I'm just making sure I can provide the food as in diffrent things witch I can and I will have the tank in about a month and I will have the supplies in another then I will begin to cycle the tank and when the tank is cycleing do you still do water changes to keep the salt balanced or do you just let it cycle all the way threw and when you put the salt water in do you have all the items in there and im still confused on these critter cages I mean are you talking about those small cages that are like half a gallon and if you are then do you put them in the larger cage and if you do that two how doese the water cycle threw them???????

Well...doing water changes while your maturing your tank is something im interested as well.

As for the critter cages, yeah...there like...those plastic half a gallon or even smaller sized little tanks. These have a lid at the top which have vertical lines (openings) all around it for ventilation. The tank cycles through them even if you put them in a critter cage at its start because of the ventilation going through the critter cage so it's not completely shut out from the rest of the tank. Just keep in mind that once its about a month old or so, it should be big enough to let loose in the main tank and a great thing would be to use the critter cage to keep any live food in such as hermit crabs, crabs and lobsters if any are available.

ok thanks a million good idea to.

If you go the critter-cage route, you usually want to drill a number of small holes in the plastic to augment flow. By small I mean small: I suspect a baby bimac might be able to climb through a 1/8" hole?

Dan

Ok so would a 1/16 be fine.

Allso about letting the tank cycle do you still do water changes to keep the tank balanced or do you just let it flow.

I suspect 1/16" would be fine, but remember you're going to need a lot of holes to get any flow. You know, 1/8" might even be OK--particularly if Octopets is shipping them a little bigger than mine was--but as soon as I saw how tiny my guy was I was just dreading him slipping out.

As for the water changes, there is a bit of debate on this. There's a lot of really good articles on reef central about the cycle--you'll learn more from a few minutes skimming what others have said there, questions you didn't even know to ask! :smile: My inclination, however, would be to not change any water during the cycle: my logic is the reason I'm cycling the tank is so that I have an ammonia spike to get those bacteria to grow. If I'm cycling it correctly the spike won't kill every single thing in the tank, so why would I want to lessen the spike and drag the process out?

Dan

Ya ok and then when the cycle is complete then do you do a larg water change to even the salt out.

"my logic is the reason I'm cycling the tank is so that I have an ammonia spike to get those bacteria to grow. If I'm cycling it correctly the spike won't kill every single thing in the tank, so why would I want to lessen the spike and drag the process out?"

I couldn't really understand this. You want bacteria to grow as a result of an ammonia spike right? By doing this, you don't have to do water changes while maturing your tank. Just out of curiosity, how come you WANT bacteria in your tank? And does having an ammonia spike kill every living thing as in everything? Why would you want that? Just interesting question...mabye I could do it when have a tank to be cycled.

I couldn't really understand this. You want bacteria to grow as a result of an ammonia spike right? By doing this, you don't have to do water changes while maturing your tank. Just out of curiosity, how come you WANT bacteria in your tank? And does having an ammonia spike kill every living thing as in everything? Why would you want that? Just interesting question...mabye I could do it when have a tank to be cycled.

I use the term bacteria colloquially--I don't personally know the taxonomy of the little guys, perhaps I should call them alga or something else entirely. Regardless, they're our little friends making aquariums possible by consuming ammonia and excreting nitrate and those who consume nitrite and excrete nitrate.

Some people set up their tanks so when they cycle they produce ammonia through the roof. Cloudy water, even. I think one way to do this is to put in a whole bunch of just-off-the-boat uncured live rock. In this case you pretty much have to change the water because there's just too much ammonia. Without having that much experience myself, I believe that it is better to have a tank that can bring itself through the cycle without deus ex machina (deus being myself, or any other aquarium keeper, of course :).

Dan

ok, It is infact bacteria, "nirtifing bacteria" to be exact. its that bacteria that makes everything possible. I did 10% water changes every week of my cycle peroid.

this should help http://www.coralforum.com/kb.php?mode=article&k=48

Ok soundes simple enofgh............

In my experience your better off lettign the tank fully cycle before doing any water changes, because you will throw off your balance. Ex: If your ammonia has already spiked, then your nitrites are begaining to take over as your ammonia is being converted, if you do a water change now,you will eliminate alot of the ammonia and nirtites, casueing your bacteria in the next stages to be less able to convert large amounts of waste. IMO Let the tank fully cycle then take care of you nitrates after your cycle is complete and ammonia and nitrites are 0 ppm. And mayeb I didn't understand your part about Salt, but have salt in the water the whole time.

Well let me get this straight i get the tank put in mu stuff like rocks and salt water let it run for 90 days and then fix the water by changing it or using chemicails to get rid of it ?????

Well let me get this straight i get the tank put in mu stuff like rocks and salt water let it run for 90 days and then fix the water by changing it or using chemicails to get rid of it ?????


Read this thread. Yes, all of it!

Maturity issues (http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=249112)

Dan

not registered.........................
its fine.

Read this thread. Yes, all of it!

Maturity issues (http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=249112)

Dan

Hi RDK,

Listen to Dan! That's got to be about the most cogent discussion of developing and maintaining water quality that I've ever seen. Eric B. is a highly respected expert in such things with both formal training and a ton of practical experience. The other participants on the thread seem to also be very thoughtful and knowledgeable - they're asking insightful questions and adding quality information of their own.

Now, you might say "but I'm not keeping any corals" and that's a reasonable point to make. The important point to take away from this is that you are NOT really considering the keeping of a pet octopus in the sense that you might think of having a pet cat or dog. A dog or cat is pretty much self supporting in terms of temperature, air, and, if you leave the toilet lid open, they don't even need you for hydration or osmotic balance. An octopus or any other marine creature is 100% dependant on you for all of these things. Get it wrong and the best thing you can hope for is that the animal dies quickly rather than suffering.

We all need to think of our aquariums as micro ecologies with consideration to maintaining a healthy environment for the animals we choose to keep. The best way to do that, as is pointed out in the RC thread is to go slowly (very slowly) and allow nature to do the work for you. Doing so is not only more effective than trying to artificially manage your parameters it's also far less work.

The downside is that it does require a fair amount of patience and there's often a period during the early phase of cycling when your tank is going to be a bit malodorous but that should pass fairly quickly and the end result will be a balanced aquarium that requires somewhat less intensive maintenance.

Polemically yours,

Alex

Free registration at reef central is about the best deal there is. If you're serious about keeping a marine aquarium you should at least do this bit of legwork. I only wish someone would have handed me this link when I was setting up my first tank.

Dan

ok thank you.