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Articles on Octopus Food Choices and Nutrition

Articles about feeding Octopuses

During some of my octo rabbit trails I came across these articles discussing attempts to feed octopuses fish diets. The studies were done to see if commercial animals could be raised more economically as food.

Article(PDF): Experimental evaluation of the energy balance in Octopus vulgaris, fed ad libitum on a high-lipid diet
Note: fatty fish (high-lipid diet) were fed and evaluated against crabs, mollasks, etc (low-lipid high-protein)
... the low AE values of the present study
support that, for octopuses, high-lipid diets are less
efficient and have a reduced capacity for growth in
comparison to low-lipid and high-protein diets.

Article(HTML): Growth and mortality of common octopus (Octopus vulgaris) fed a monospecific fish diet.
Note: Groups of vulgaris octopuses were exclusively fed mackerel for 72 days
Because cephalopods have a very low lipid digestibility (O'Dor et al. 1984, Lee 1994, Mazon et al. 2007), high quantities of lipids in the digestive tract may obstruct the absorption of amino acids, thus affecting growth (Garcia Garcia & Cerezo Valverde 2006). Fatty diets such as mackerel and sardine might certainly not be sufficient for the good nutrition of octopuses, and complements should be necessary.

Full Article (PDF or URL): The use of alternative prey (crayfish, Procambarus clarki, and hake, Merlucius gayi) to culture Octopus vulgaris (Cuvier 1797)
Note:
The results indicate that crayfish is not an adequate replacement for the usual prey to fatten octopus... None of the 36 octopuses died during the experiment. A higher final weight was registered in octopuses fed squid than in animals fed crayfish
 
Articles on Octopus Food Choices and Nutrition

Or in other words I finally published my masters work after sitting on it for 3 years! In short what we found is that lipid digestibility in O. rubescens may influence what this octopus chooses to eat.
You can find the abstract here or you can email me for a reprint if your interested.
 
Articles: Octopus Food Choices and Nutrition

Creating this as a way to cross reference posts about octopus nutrition and appropriate foods.
 

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