• Looking to buy a cephalopod? Check out Tomh's Cephs Forum, and this post in particular shares important info about our policies as it relates to responsible ceph-keeping.

My Octopus died!!

apawlows

Pygmy Octopus
Registered
Joined
Oct 3, 2007
Messages
9
I'm a first time octopus owner, I caught Ursula, the hawaiian day octopus (O. cyanea) 5 days ago. Since getting her into the tank she has refused to eat. I put a range of different sizes of live crabs into the tank which she seemed wholly uninterested in and also tried to feed her frozen shrimp and fish. She would take the frozen food from me, consider it then throw it away. Chemically the tank should be allright. Before i caught her it had been up and running for about 2 months with bio filtration for about a month, it has mechanical filtration along with an oversized protein skimmer. She was alone in the tank which is 120 gallons. This morning i went down to find her on her side and totally unable to move any of her tentacles. She was also unable to change the color of her tentacles. I came back in a couple of hours to find her dead. I have no idea what happened to her. Last night she looked fine. Does anyone know what the problem here could have been? Thanks.
 
:sad: :angelpus: It's possible that she was stressed by the capture, or that the reason you caught her was that she was at the end of her life already: I don't know about cyanea in particular, but many octos are inclined to be "out and about" rather than hiding right at the ends of their lives. Other than that, the only things I can think of are water related: did you test the water quality? Is it possible that there's copper contamination?
 
Sorry about your octopus. :angelpus:

Please check your water parameters to be sure they were/are in order. No copper or metal has been in the tank, has it?

It's sometimes difficult to completely determine the cause of death.

Nancy
 

Shop Amazon

Shop Amazon
Shop Amazon; support TONMO!
Shop Amazon
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon and affiliated sites.
Back
Top