- Joined
- Jun 23, 2010
- Messages
- 7
A friend of mine has what I believe are O. joubini eggs and mum that we are assuming are fertile as they haven't had her for very long. I've dabbled in the cephalopod world, and even raised a few unknown ones from a fish store that had eggs (more on that later). They were just laid a couple days ago, so I think we have a few weeks to plan. I'm going to design the setup for both of us, and we're going to split the babies.
Last time I raised babies it was a crap setup because we weren't expecting any. And while it worked, it didn't work well. For starters, even though 3 of the octopuses lived normal lifespans, they were much smaller than mom, the mantle being about the size of a quarter. I think it was a feeding issue. I've been reading more about raising them and I was feeding too little too infrequently, and only feeding live mysis. As they got bigger, fed ghost shrimp, but possibly not frequently enough. From what i've been reading, i should be feeding amphipods at the very least, and small crabs if I can get them. Fortunately I have a surplus of amphipods from my algae scrubber I think I can use consistently. (I've been harvesting them regularly to supplement the diet of seahorses).
I used betta cups, obtained from my local petsmart, and cut holes in the side, gluing mesh webing to it. Then cut holes in the top that were big enough for airline tubes. I used one of these Amazon.com and hooked the airline to it, so each cup had it's own water supply. The cups were suspended on a makeshift egg crate shelf in a 20 gallon seahorse tank because it was the best option I had at the time.
It "worked" but it wasn't the greatest setup. The netting would get clogged, and I lost at least one to the water flow getting plugged up. Feeding was difficult because we had to take them out, get the cover off, drop the food in, then cover again, so you couldn't go very fast.
I'm looking for ideas for what has worked for other people. My husband and I are learning to work acryrlic but aren't very good yet. Like we don't have a blade for cutting, but we have a local plastic company we buy scrap from to experiment on. We do have a router, but can only do basic trimming with it. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Last time I raised babies it was a crap setup because we weren't expecting any. And while it worked, it didn't work well. For starters, even though 3 of the octopuses lived normal lifespans, they were much smaller than mom, the mantle being about the size of a quarter. I think it was a feeding issue. I've been reading more about raising them and I was feeding too little too infrequently, and only feeding live mysis. As they got bigger, fed ghost shrimp, but possibly not frequently enough. From what i've been reading, i should be feeding amphipods at the very least, and small crabs if I can get them. Fortunately I have a surplus of amphipods from my algae scrubber I think I can use consistently. (I've been harvesting them regularly to supplement the diet of seahorses).
I used betta cups, obtained from my local petsmart, and cut holes in the side, gluing mesh webing to it. Then cut holes in the top that were big enough for airline tubes. I used one of these Amazon.com and hooked the airline to it, so each cup had it's own water supply. The cups were suspended on a makeshift egg crate shelf in a 20 gallon seahorse tank because it was the best option I had at the time.
It "worked" but it wasn't the greatest setup. The netting would get clogged, and I lost at least one to the water flow getting plugged up. Feeding was difficult because we had to take them out, get the cover off, drop the food in, then cover again, so you couldn't go very fast.
I'm looking for ideas for what has worked for other people. My husband and I are learning to work acryrlic but aren't very good yet. Like we don't have a blade for cutting, but we have a local plastic company we buy scrap from to experiment on. We do have a router, but can only do basic trimming with it. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.