• 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.

$400 Octo set up is it possible?

robind;134433 said:
In continuation of the spirit of this thread, I've finished my DIY stand for my cheap second hand tank. It's a 66 gallon 'picture frame' aquarium. It's about 3' long by 3' deep by 15" wide. I made the stand using about $25 of lumber and a dozen carriage bolts I had laying around. It's about 1' longer than it needs to be to make room for food tanks.
The filter is a sump consisting of three 5 gallon buckets. The main tank will drain with an overflow box (that I also got second hand), and I'll drill the smaller food tanks to plumb everything together. The protein skimmer isn't finished yet. I estimate the materials so far at around $75, not including the pump. The glass tank was $60. The overflow box was $20. I bought two buckets of instant ocean on ebay for
 
I have a box full of plumbing nick knacks and aquarium miscellanea, from previous/current aquariums. I'm pretty sure I have all that stuff covered. If anything, I won't need a heater but a chiller! That I don't have.

Concerning the live rock...I know many people consider it a necessity, but I have kept saltwater tanks before and I have never bought a lb of live rock. I simply substitute other media for the same purpose.
 
Keep in mind that feeding your octo could cost like $60/week depending on what species you get and how big it is and how much you can get the prey for.
So, your food budget will be 7.2 ($3100) times greater than your startup budget if it lives a year.

Keeping an octo inexpensively is more about solving the food supply equation than the setup.
 
It is true that an octopus often needs live food when it is first place in an aquarium but all the octopuses I can remember have eventually accepted frozen shrimp for much of their diet. Other foods can also be purchased fresh from a seafood market (clams, an occassional crawfish, mussels) and are usually accepted. However, even feeding live fiddlers for the first week or three does not mandate $60/week. Raising new hatched cuttles CAN easily cost that much until they take something other than live mysis but the figure is excessive for a octo.
 
My rather delayed response to the live food thing: thankfully I live in Santa Cruz, right on the pacific ocean. The baitshop at the wharf has a nice selection of live crustaceans. I'm going to try to get an octopus from them too...
 

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