Biology Student with a question

[Infusoria]

This is a really interesting thread

 

[tlasz24]

Thanks for all your suggestions, everyone. I have in fact raised some marine animals before, with mostly successful results. I've raised things from artemia to daphnia (both of which are easy to raise, I know), and also some random things like diving spiders and crayfish.

tank size shouldn't be a problem, as the local Walmart stopped selling fish and other animals like that and have donated all of their tanks to my bio teacher.
I really came on here for advice on what to get and such, not to be given alternate ideas.

 

[tlasz24]

From what I can see, the Bimaculoides is the best choice size and price wise. I started looking into this a few months ago, and have a basic tank system set up (not big enough, but just to get the basic idea down).

 

[DWhatley]

tlasz24,
Somehow I don't think Walmart donated a chiller ($300 min, usually needed for a bimac, Carribean octos are usually warmer water critters but the bimac should not exceed 72 deg and your equipment will raise the temperature above ambient. It is possible to use fans if you can keep the ambient below 72), food ($40-$70 per MONTH unless you can collect it yourself or the school can provide live food), an escape proof top (customized to the tank), a skimmer ($50+), a filter system ($40-$150 + filter media for the initial setup and regular changes - usually carbon), salt ($50 for 160 gallons - heavy water changes required), RO water ($1.00 per gallon if purchased needed for the saltwater and as fresh to top off daily. Daily requirements for the needed 50 gallon tank will be +/-1 gallon), live rock ($40++), substrate (20+) and some way to test your water quality ($20 min + replacement reagents/strips). The list gets longer (check the forum on what people have spent and what they have). The only inexpensive thing for an octopus tank is the lighting. You can do without lighting altogether for an octo tank and use your ambient light. The tank itself can be at the lower end of the expense especially for those who already have one or buy used so even though that part is free, the rest needs consideration and the cost goes up with the volume of water.

The other concern is the cycling of the tank during your project time. It takes 3 months to cycle a marine tank. Does your project allow for that much time BEFORE you get a critter? Unfortunately, there just are not short-cuts for what you would like to do for the class. Part of my suggestion for a small tank critter is that you can change a large percentage of the water to help with the minimized cycle time problem (it won't minimize the cycle time). You can't do this for an octopus.

What is practical is to design your project so that you bring your current basic understanding to the next level and see if keeping a marine aquarium at home (where there are not the time limits of a class project) is something that would interest you.

It isn't that forum members don't want to give you advice. The advise given is based upon years of experience, including failures that they would like to help you avoid.

 

[Steve O'Shea]

Very(!!!) well said.

 

[tlasz24]

Yeah, but the question I'm asking now is; do you really need all of that stuff in order to keep an octopus alive, or is that what you need to keep an octopus in perfect conditions?
Tank- check
filter system - check (girl who did this project last year did some other marine animal, and had this really nice filter system, probably around eighty dollars in value. So she left it behind after the project. I lucked out there, I guess)
Live rock - obviously not needed, but I've got that stuff they put on the bottom of fish tanks, that colorful rock stuff. Looks about the same
water quality tests- Are you serious? It's a biology class, my teacher's got that stuff up the wazoo. Check
Food- I'm buying some of my classmates' organisms off of them to use as food (shrimp, crabs, etc). Check.
Salt- Tons of sea salt left over from the artemia project we did. Check.
Chiller- What? I don't need that. We've got the tank in the greenhouse thing, and it's early spring. The temperature is within the requirements set by Nancy King here; between 18 and 22 degrees C.
I think I'm pretty set here. Now all I need is the octo.

 

[cuttlegirl]

Ok,

What size tank are you going to use?

Live rock is a type of filtration system. The live rock contains bacteria that breaks down waste from the animals in the aquarium. Octopus produce a lot of waste, so live rock is highly recommended to help filter the waste (and toxins) out of the water.

What type of filter? What size of filter? If it is a filter for a 20 gallon tank and you put it on a 40 gallon tank, it is only going to clean up about 1/2 the waste in the water.

In general, a protein skimmer is recommended for an octopus. They produce a lot of waste and a protein skimmer helps remove the waste (different types of waste than the filter).

Do you have a place to order octopus? Do you know for certain what type of octopus you want?

You want a tank to be "cycled" for three months in order to build up good bacteria in the rocks (gravel) on the bottom of the tank to help break down the waste. If you do not "cycle" the tank the waste can build up, become toxic and kill all life in the tank. There are ways to combat a build-up of toxins in the tank, like changing that salt water frequently, but it is best to have a cycled tank for a delicate animal like an octopus.

 

[Nancy]

I don't think we ever want to aim at just keeping an octopus alive somehow. We, as responsible ceph keepers, should try to give our octopuses and cuttlefish the best homes possible. We want not only to keep our ceph pets alive for a month, but to keep them healthy and provide enrichment so that they live as long as possible.

Nancy

 

[Steve O'Shea]

Hi Tlasz24

We can only ask that you don't try keeping an octopus at this stage. Years of experience shows that these super-sensitive animals have a nasty habit of dying if everything is not perfect.

To put it another way. If this is part of your coursework, and the animal does die, well that's not exactly going to reflect well on your grade. Whereas, if you pick another, less-challenging animal to keep alive, and there have been a number of suggestions made here, and you keep that alive and healthy, then that will reflect well on your grade. Should this less-challenging (let's call it a guinnea pig species) die also, then you clearly were not ready to move to the next step (and you saved an octopus, an expensive octopus, in the process).

There's a big difference between raising Artemia and Daphnia, and Octopus!

Please, use a crustacean for this experiment! You'll get varied data also, and can look at periodicity of moult.

Why not get a hermit crab and get a glass blower to build you a glass whelk. Then you can place that in the tank, the hermit crab can inhabit it (if you deprive it of all other normal whelk shells), and then you'll be able to monitor egg development through this crabs life cycle also (if you have a few males and females in there), and examine what that crab is actually doing within that glass shell (most people would never get to see this). It would make for some pretty sensational video.

You could probably get a glass blower to make you several whelks for the LFS cost of an octopus.

 

[main_board]

A high and dry freshwater sponge from the Rio Negro, Amazon Basin, Brazil.

 

[Michael Blue]

Yeah, but the question I'm asking now is; do you really need all of that stuff in order to keep an octopus alive, or is that what you need to keep an octopus in perfect conditions?...

This is just my personal opinion, but if you aren't dedicated to keeping ANY animal in the best possible conditions, you should consider some other animal you could keep in the best possible conditions, or don't keep animals at all.
This would particularly be true for rare, endangered, difficult to keep or intelligent species.

By your statement, (and I don't mean this to sound harsh) I would say you aren't qualified to keep an Octopus.