My first post here so I will introduce myself. My name is Steve; and after wanting an octopus for over 5 years I am finally able to get one now that I just bought my own house. I ordered a 50 gal pentagon corner tank, stand, canopy, light, wet/dry, skimmer and all of that good stuff, and it should be here next week.
I have done a lot of reading on this forum but I still have a couple of questions.
Even though it will be a couple of months before I can actually get the octopus, I was curious as to what is the most cost effective food of choice? And is a feeder tank going to save me money in the long run?
Any other tips for a first timer would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
Steve

Hi Steve! Welcome to TONMO.com.

I'll be watching the answers to this question closely; I'd like to return to providing live food for octopuses on the site again when I can get a devoted provider for it.

Also note that our sponsor FishSupply.com supplies several tasty octopus treats including snails and hermit crabs.

Congrats on the new house!!

Steve, I have only been an octopus keeper for 6 days but I have kept aquariums for many years. With every animal that feed live food I use a seperate tank to keep food because in the past I had to order food from places online. Buying in bulk is better when it is shipped next day every time but if you have a sorce in town or close only keep a week. You need to keep the feeder tank well maintained though for the same reason you keep your others maintained, you dont want to feed your animals sick food. I would start out slow though estimate what you would need for about a week or so and see how that works. When I had a porcipine puffer I kept 2-4 weeks worth of feeder shrimp and fish. With my new octopus Ajax I am feeding him hermit crabs, snails and some shrimp from the market until he is big enough for crayfish. Once he is eating crayfish I will only keep a few days worth of food because I live very close to a lake chuck full of them and I am an avid scuba diver and will enjoy collecting them. It all depends on you supply. I hope this answers part of your question. Have fun and good luck.

Adrian

Live food is great if you can get it. Feeding an Octo hermits, etc can work out to be a bit pricey. So small feeder shrimp are much more economical. But even these can be expensive, my vulgaris used to eat about 50 a day! I have often use prawns frozen or fresh from a supermarket. Most Octopus are also keen (amongst other things) on cockles in shells. I use gamma irradiated ones, the left over shells are ideal for Octopus to build dens from. Make sure if you use any frozen it is always thouroughly defrosted. The use of a supplement may not be a bad idea if you end up using a lot of frozen food.

J.Scott

Hey Steve:

Welcome to TONMO! :) Once you get it set up be sure to enter your tank in the OCTO database.

As to Octo food, It seems from the posts here that different Octos have different tastes. There are Octo-keepers (is that a word??) here at TONMO who feed frozen food, shrimp,crabs, snails and crayfish. Everyone seems to have a different story as to which their octo prefers.

My bimac, Tralfaz, has refused to eat just about everything but snails and crayfish. This works out for me because my LFS stocks crayfish on a regular basis. I keep a 10 gallon tank just for them and tend to buy about a weeks worth at a time.

You may have to experiment with several different types of food before you find success. If you search the back posts you will find that I was driven to distraction before I figured out what Tralfaz would eat on a regular basis. (I had several pieces of frozen food spit back in my face in the process). If you try a variety of foods I'm sure you will find something that your octo loves (some seem to be willing to eat just about anything).

Good luck and keep us posted.

George

hi Steve :)
Try freshwater feeder shrimp,they are cheaper and most LFS have them in stock most of the time.

I think the feeding experience has been different for each one of us, due to the preferences of our octopuses and what's available. It would be wonderful and much simpler to live near the sea!

I've been trying to reproduce some of the variety in foods that a bimac would find in the ocean, but at the same time tried to get Ollie interested in at least some food that was less expensive and more available.

Fresh scallops seemed to be a good choice, and he likes them. He has eaten fresh scallops since he arrived to live with me. Sometimes I will supplement this with a small piece of fresh fish or frozen shrimp. He used to eat snails, but thinks they're too much work now.

What he really likes is live food he can capture, such as fiddler crabs and shore shimp, which I have sent in from Florida - this does add expense, but seems to be entertaining for him, too. He also likes crawfish, which are available in season.

Sometimes I feed him freshwater shrimp (ghost shrimp) and these are good for a younger octopus, but it takes a lot to make a meal for a bigger bimac!

Nancy

I've got a Bimac right now that is behaving very different than any I've kept before. Keeping in track with the food/feeder discussion, this is the first octopus I've ever kept that bothered to drill my cleaning snails open. For the first time as a cephalopodologist (a word more fun to write than say) I have to clean algae off the aquarium glass manually, because Tomi Undercoral eats all the snails. I now have a collection of turbo snail shells with a little pinhole where the adductor muscle used to attach.

For those that may have raised an eyebrow to that, many species of octopus are extremely fond of other mulloscs as food. Sometimes the octopus is strong enough to rip the shells apart or manually pull a snail out, but most often they drill a tiny hole in the shell with their radula. What fascinates the scientifically minded is that the octopuses seem to know exactly where to drill every shell they find- bivalve or gastropod- to hit the adductor muscle responsible for holding the shells together (or tethering the animal in it's shell.) Amazing.

Cheers! Jimbo

Hi Jim

what species of snail were they going for? I havnt had an octo go for turbos yet...

Cheers

Hey:

Colin, Tralfaz goes for the Turbos as well. An unfortunate side affect of this is that he now will eat any snail that I put in the tank :x Ah well, it just means that I have to clean more often.

LOL they just do it to be akward dont they :lol:

Hi,

I've had a slightly different experience. The first thing my bimac Ollie did when he arrived last March was to kill the large turbo snail that was cleaning the tank. For a long time I could hand him a snail as a treat, and he worked hard to open it. But more recently, Ollie has come to prefer other food, so I have 6 snails cleaning the tank now and Ollie shows no interest.

Nancy

The snails falling victim to Tomi's whims are standard turbos, bumblebee snails and other basic cleaners. I've had octopuses tear snails out of their shells, but Tomi is the first one that is actually drilling them. Usually he eats them, but he did kill one seemingly just for the sake of killing it.

Yeah, I had to invest in one of those magna-scrapers to de-algafy the glass. Which led to an interesting behavior: I just "park" the scraper at the top back corner of the tank but lately Tomi routinely pulls the scraper away from the magnet at some point during the day. He lets it go and it floats around the tank- it's mate on the dry side having fallen to the floor without the magnet to hold it in place. I wish I could catch him in the act.

Cheers, Jimbo

Thanks for all of the responses.
How much money are you guys spendeing a week on your octo food?

Octos and cephalopods arent cheap to feed. If you think you can cut corners, think again.

I'd say Tomi's weekly chow budget is around 15 bucks, not including his tendency to snack on tank inhabitants. I chiefly feed Tomi frozen paneid shrimp from the supermarket. A bag of roughly 45 shrimp costs about 6 bucks and lasts a month and a half. He'll eat one or two a day. I supplement Tomis meal plan with weekly infusions of live crayfish and fiddler crabs. Fiddlers cost 3 bucks a pop and I generally buy three at a time, so they "inhabit" the tank and Tomi can be stimulated by the opportunity to hunt. Crayfish can usually be had for $1.00-$1.50.

Occasionally I'll make my way out to the bait shops near the chesapeake bay and buy up a couple boxes of live grass shrimp (Paleomonetes pugio) While they are a bit small for a big honkin' bimac like Tomi, watching him go nuts catching them is worth the hour drive. At a typical bait shop a box of about 100 "live" shrimp is about three bucks, but despite my best efforts to acclimatize them, usually only 50-60% of them live.

Rock on, Jimbo

Jimbo is right about the expense of octo food, if you try to give them some live food and some variety in their diet. And it gets worse if you don't live near the ocean.

I have to have my live shrimp and fiddler crabs shipped to me, because I live so far inland. These shrimp are also small, but worth it since Ollie enjoys catching them so much.

Nancy

My weekly food expenses for my cuttlefish is about S$4-6. I spent about S$2 weekly on food for my late octo(crawled out of tank after 13 days).he was about 3 inches fr armtip to armtip.

Well that is not bad at all.
Has anyone tried feeding there octo cut up pieces of fresh fish?

On another note, all of my equipment came in today to find that the stand does not fit the tank. The store had to send it back and I am going to have to wait another week or two for a new stand.

I considered trying to set up the tank without the stand but decided against it because I think a 50 gallon tank filled with water would be very difficult to move.

Anyway, anyone else want to give their input?

Yes, my octo will sometimes eat small pieces of fresh fish. I've tried sole and halibut.

One of the best ways to reduce costs is to tell the people at the seafood market that you're buying the seafood to feed your octopus. Bringing along a photo helps, too. You'll probably get a reduced price, or even get your octopus food without charge.

Nancy

I was reading the post's here and someone said they live close to a lake with crawfish in it, i live with'n 10 mins of 2 different lakes and have a fairly large creek running through some of my land. All of witch have tons of crawfish, but is it safe to take them and feed them to an octopus?

If so this would make an extreamly cheap and easy way for me to feed a larger octopus (that i plan to get small and grow big). If anyone knows if it is or is not safe i would like to know, because ill set up a 30 gal. for crawfish if it will work!

Yes, you can use crawfish for part of your octo food, at least after your octopus has grown a bit.

I don't think we have any research results on this subject, but an octopus is an ocean dweller and normally eats things from the ocean, not freshwater creatures. Your octopus could have deficiencies if you fed it wholly on crawfish. Add some shrimp or other seafood to balance his diet.

Also, crawfish would be better food after your octo gets a little larger. You can also start with smaller crawfish. Some I've fed to Ollie have been an inch or an inch and a half long. But if you catch them yourself, you'll have access to all sizes.

Hope this helps,

Nancy

Thank you, ill make sure to feed it other than just crawfish, not to mention lakes freeze over durring the winter here. It just sounds fun to go get them and feed one out here and there, watching octos hunt is the best part. The either seem to think it out, or just use brute force.

just a question, do i have to worrie about pinchers or anything?(not pinching me, but the octo).

This is based on my experience with Ollie -

I don't think crawfish are very good for small octopuses. We've already had a report of one killed by a crawfish. Also, octopuses have to learn to hunt each type of prey. Even as a larger octo, Ollie did not know how to deal with a crawfish at first, and once pounced on it backwards.

I would make sure the crawfish is considerably smaller than the octo. There seem to be different species of crawfish - some have small pincers that are little problem, and some are very sturdy with big pincers (they look like small lobsters) that could do some damage.

I give Ollie the crawfish in this way - I hold it in tongs with its tail to Ollie. I make sure Ollie sees it. Then I release it above the sand. Ollie will swoop over and envelop the crawfish. I use this this method to prevent the crawfish from running into a hole and trying to defend itself. It works really well.

Although Ollie likes crawfish, he seems to like hunting and eating small shrimp even more.

Nancy

The tongs sound like a good idea, i wont be feeding and crawfish till i know the octo is of size and power to take them with little effort. I have been pinched by the things more than enough, includeing them large ones with the pinchers the size of my thumb. I wont bother getting them, just the little females with small pinchers.

Can we have a list of feeder fish that wont hurt anything in the tank? Wouldn't want to give it something that will hurt the octo. Are the gold fish at the LFS ok to use?

Well 1st off i certainly wouldn't use goldfish... they are prone to problems and normally get treated with copper based medications so that's a big problem!

Probably the best feeder would be mollies as they can be cheap and will even adapt to the marine water if done over an hour or two.

Importantly though, fish is not an ideal diet for an octopus and you should always have a good reliable source for crabs and shrimps before you get an octopus as this mimics their diet in the wild.

C

Thank you Colin :notworth: I ordered a 50 pack of hermits I am keeping in my Fish only tank. They are small, so I feed once a day. I had a question about toys, I posted this in another forum, but i dont think anyone will come across it any time soon... Deep in the darkest corners of TONMO... anyway,
Some octos like legos, and some like live fiddlers and other live animals/food that they chase around the aquarium but dont actually kill/eat. I was thinking of useing thoes little plastic fish that have tails that flap, so they can actually swim, they just do it mindlessly. Would this mess with the octos heads (if they attack and dont kill, then try again and again, and fail over and over) or make a good toy? Would they realize it isn't alive, even tho its tail flaps?
Thanks to anyone who responds!

My octopus is very good at recognizing what is edible and what is plastic. Once he touched it, I doubt it he'd be interested, but octos have different personalities and like different things.

Also, a younger octo might be frightened by something that moved like the fish.

My octo, Ollie, doesn't like toys but does like to play tug of war with the feeding stick and likes possessions that he hides in his den. The latest possession is a small bottle with some sand and a shell in it, closed off with a cork.

Nancy

I love how each octo has its on personality! I just got a mag float yesterday to clean the glass but mostly for a toy...

Yeah an octo will play with a mag float.... :)

As a rule, before putting anything in an octo tank you should make sure that it is safe for use with human foods or human cooking... as some of the cheaper plastics can leach out chemicals, I'm sure the fish you are talking about would do that... at least lego is made to be safe for kids as many kids chew/swallow lego blocks accidently. :cry:

Yea, your right. I got my little cousin one a few years back and found them as bathtub toys last time I visited. They were all yellow, not something I would like in my tank. Thanks for the reminder Colin, you always seem to help everyone out before a disaster can occur. Countless octos have been saved as a result of you and you endless experience! :notworth:
I was also wondering if anyone knew where to find cuttlefish. I would love to have something in our livingroom to show off. My dad wont let me put an octo downstairs because he says "it looks like something out of aliens." but he accepted the idea of a cuttlefish. Every time we would go to the LFS he would point out how much he liked ghost fish, and the way they move. But he has too much pride to go freshwater :roll: . I think he is in tune for a cuttle, and I started buying up supplies to start aclimating (sp) the water. A kick ass 75g with another Eheim 2229, Turbo Tloator 1000, and a sump/ refrigerum loaded with micro algae and maby some clams (I hear they eat nitrates... I dunno if that is true, but ill do some homework). I would love to go catch a cuttle, but live in Virginia (I do have SSI certification :mrgreen: ). So where do I go to get one? I can pay just about anything as far as shipping goes, but I just want it to arrive SAFE.
Any thoughts...

:)

uh oh....... not gonna be easy :(

you need to read back old posts about cuttles and see what nightmares your fellow americans have had trying to get cuttles! As far as catching one yourself there is one drawback..... you dont get them around the american coasts at all!

If money is no object then perhaps you can import them from the UK but you are talking a lot of red tape and expensive liscensing, etc.

do a search on Sepia bandensis on this site and see what you come up with... its the most commonly imported cuttle and rarely lives longer than a few weeks in captivity... not an easy task i'm afraid to say

thanks for the kind comments :)

Thanks Colin,
Im going to do my best to get ahold of one. I would most likely like to ship them as eggs, beacue of the easier shipping factors. But if they are as hard to find as you say they are, then most likely its going to be impossible to find eggs. I think I read on some post forum that the "octopets" guy was looking into the Septa cuttles. Ill give it a shot,
Scott

I remember a few years back That Fish Place in Pa had a cuttlefish. If you're not too far from Lancaster, you may want to put in a call to them. I've had good luck with all that I've purchased there.\

Carol

I will look into that, Thanks Carol! :heee: