Complete newbie requesting help with first octopus setup!

[djkaty]

Thanks Joe, that was a really good post, and I'm glad you read the whole thread so you know I didn't just see an octopus in a shop and decide to keep one on a whim.

I have read about and understand (or I think I understand) the nitrogen cycle, in theory, practice is another matter. It was good to hear it again from you with the details; I hadn't read that the surface of the live rock was what allowed the increase in bacteria but I assumed that was the case - it's logical.

I have two books on the way about saltwater aquariums which I'll read thoroughly. I won't introduce an octopus until I have a grasp on everything.

The buckets are 30 liter buckets so you are suggesting 3.6kg of live rock per bucket. There should easily be that amount in there, however most of it was in one bucket; today I have transferred a large piece of live rock and a snail into the bucket with the fish. I don't think the rock was degraded during transporation as we siphoned out water from the tank and made sure the surface of the rock was fully submerged in it. It wasn't out of water for more than the few seconds than it took to pick it up out of the tank and put it in the bucket.

You got the bucket problem the wrong way round, let me give you how the setup has been the whole time til today:

1. Bucket with many kg live rock, 3 hermit crabs and 1 snail. No ammonia problem given that its a bucket (

 

[djkaty]

Couple of other points I forgot:

1. The contents of the buckets is exactly what was in the tank I purchased, and he had kept it running for a couple of years, so there must be enough live rock (surely?)

2. The saltwater has ammonia in it of about 1ppm before I even put it in the buckets with the animals.

 

[djkaty]

Doesn't sound like cyanobacteria, and most of the solutions suggested at How to Stop Red Slime Algae in Your Aquarium (and the 2nd page of that article) I'm already doing, I think, to the best of my ability.

 

[DWhatley]

Ammonia only after you add the salt is a puzzle. I would switch brands when you buy again. Is this the salt from the tank owner or new that you purchased? If it was open, I wonder if he contaminated it with something (unintentionally of course).

I know using an air stone will help dramatically with exchanging CO2. I run a 30 gallon 3.5 tall tank with little surface area, no sump (not possible with this setup) and no open air return. If the air pump goes out for more than a few hours, I will loose the fish (based on an unfortunate experience when it was a freshwater tank). I keep a battery backup pump on the tank at all times. It turns when the power goes out and had kept the fish alive over several days (and only two sets of batteries). For the octopus tanks, I add one to the sump even though I have a skimmer and cascading return. If your fish is not coming to the surface for air or breathing heavily, you are handling the air exchange.

If you can put the opening of the sock in front of the pump (a suggestion I made somewhere along the line), it will help the carbon to be more of an active filtration and less of a passive one. The problem with doing that is that you need to have the carbon in a mesh bag and not loose in the sock. At this point, you are pretty well stuck with passive unless you can rig something to pump the water into the sock. It won't hurt anything if some of it gets loose in the bucket though.

Little by little you will get there. Until you can get proper filtration set up in the tank, dilution is still your most effective solution. Normally, I would avoid putting much LR in with the fish but since you are not showing ammonia in the LR bucket, my concerns about adding ammonia (from die off) may be unfounded so if you can squeeze another piece in there and keep water circulating around it, Joe-Ceph's suggestion for more biological surface area may help.

 

[djkaty]

Morning guys and girls Yes I see the various dilemmas and it all comes down to next week when I can do something about all this, just hoping my fish stays alive for a while longer til I can give him a proper home.

I thought that with the filter sock just draped over the edge that some but not most of the water would drift through the sock and carbon, and just be less effective than if water is pumped through it, is that right or?

The fish seems fine, he behaves 'normally', rests at night in the same place every time and swims around energetically during the day. He just doesn't eat much. The colours on him are vibrant, he is a good shape and doesnt look in any way sick to my untrained eye.

The salt is Red Sea Pro Coral Salt, brand new bucket that I bought in Oslo. I hadn't put the lid on it again after use though - but it hasn't been touched except when I've added salt to RO water, using the same measuring jug each time. I haven't used any salt from the person who sold the aquarium. I did wonder if the salt has some ammonia in it, but I couldn't find anything about it on the ingredients.

How often should I be cleaning the filter sock and carbon? How often is the carbon normally replaced?

I'll take a picture of the orange stuff in the buckets later today, I haven't been able to identify it via Google.

 

[DWhatley]

You will get some (but not much) passive carbon filtration from your set up with the sock. If you have a more porous container that will contain the carbon and has not seen soap or other use, it would be better than the sock for the current set up. A leg from a pair of panty hose or a similar nylon trouser sock is one thing you might have on hand that could be used. Not as good as a mesh bag but better than the sock. If you have a new pair in the house, cut off a leg, rinse it, put in the carbon and tie a knot at the top. Leave it long so that you can just cut off the knot, rinse and repeat. If you can come up with something like this, then putting the charcoal in the sock and putting the sock in front of your power head will give a more active filtration and even collect some larger particles in the sock. Once you have the tank together and are running water through the sock, the sock will serve to remove particles but for now it does nothing.

Changing carbon is one of those unscientific calls. The answer is when it is dirty and will no longer absorb pollutants but there is no good physical sign when that occurs. I rinse mine weekly and swap out bags (putting the bag I removed and rinsed into a bucket of RO freshwater) but this is not a normal procedure. My "go by" for determining I need new carbon is when it no longer leaves black in the rinse water but others likely have a regular schedule and might have a better suggestion (the dustiness of carbon varies a lot depending on how it has been treated).

Red Sea is a decent brand of salt and it should not be adding ammonia. I would suspect your reagents as being old (a common problem and they should be dated on the box or individual packet) except you don't see it in your RO water. So your ammonia in newly mixed water is very odd. We have seen it in RO water when chloramine is used to treat the water (a process that binds ammonia and chlorine - usually this mixture gives off a deadly gas but apparently not in this form - to keep the water bacteria free) but since you are not seeing it in the straight RO water it is very much a puzzle.

I will highly suggest that you cover your salt bucket tightly every time you open it or it will absorb moisture from the air and start to be difficult to get out of the container (it will become quite hard and chunky). Here, they sell salt in a large bucket with a screw on lid for making about 160 gallons. If you can afford the purchase once, you can refill the container but you will be upset with yourself if you leave off the top on that much salt and have to deal with it a long time (voice of experience ) Now I buy bulk that comes in bags and only dump one bag in the bucket at a time.

 

[djkaty]

Thanks D,

That is how I basically understood the current situation with the carbon and sock, so thanks for re-affirming that. I'm asking the questions anyway to make sure I have a proper grasp of it.

It's summer at the moment so all us Norway girls are dancing around outside in our bare legs (lol, might be a culture thing come to think of it :P), that's a good solution though, will get some next week. Winter is coming soon though, I can feel the temperature dropping a lot the last days (we live a few degrees south of the arctic circle line so the seasons are fast and extreme).

All the re-agents are old except the ammonia tester which is brand new, I had to buy it the day I got the air stone because it was the one test kit I was missing. The only old one I've used so far is pH and that seems to be giving reasonable values (8.1-8.4). So, I don't think it's the tester.

Today I will make some saltwater as an experiment, and test the ammonia at all stages, just to repeat my results from before. Yes, I have also learned the hard way to close the lid (as I discovered yesterday when I tried to get salt out of the bucket) but fortunately I only bought 7kg because 22kg was $200-something (Norway is expensive). I'll get the bigger bucket next time though.

My books have arrived today, including the Tonmo-authored one, though I didn't actually know this site when I ordered it!

 

[DWhatley]

If you are buying something for the charcoal, just get a mesh bag (zippered or velcro, not drawstring). The panty hose suggestion was only if you happened to have some It is definitely summer here and with temps in the high 90's (33ish C) I am certainly NOT wearing hose!

 

[Joe-Ceph]

I wasn't confused about how your buckets are set up. I understood that the more serious ammonia problem was in the bucket with the fish, and very little live rock, in it. When you say that the 2nd bucket (the one with a lot of live rock and a couple of snails) has "

 

[Joe-Ceph]

The contents of the buckets is exactly what was in the tank I purchased, and he had kept it running for a couple of years, so there must be enough live rock (surely?)

Yes, but only if:
1) The animals and live rock are not separated into two systems.
2) None of the bacteria have died (starved)
3) You are not feeding more than he did.

Even after you solve those problems you'll need to increase the capacity of your filtration system because an octopus produces much more waste than a fish of equal weight (triple?), and because an octopus weighs many times more than a clown fish. Here are some thoughts about filtration for an octopus tank.

From what I've read, your skimmer can handle a heavily stocked reef tank of your size (50 gal), which makes it a little on the weak side given that your octopus will produce more waste, but since you already own it, use it and see if it is sufficient. It's gotten good reviews from those who've used it.

I strongly recommend that you weigh the live rock you have now, so you know what you're working with (If you have a bathroom scale, just weigh your self holding an empty bucket, and weigh yourself holding a bucket containing your live rock (without water)). After you pick a species of octopus, find out from Tonmo people who have that species, and use only live rock and a skimmer for filtration, how many pounds of live rock they use. That will give you an idea of how much more live rock you will eventually need. If you discover that the price for the amount of live rock you need is too painful, you can do what I and many other octopus keepers have done, and set up a wet/dry trickle filter (probably using "bio-balls"). Such filters are not very expensive to buy used (although most have been used for fresh water systems and so may have been exposed to copper) and they are cheap and simple to make. I won't describe how to do it unless you ask, just know that wet/dry filters (also called "trickle filters" or "bio-balls") are a cheap and easy to set up alternative to expensive live rock, and better suited than live rock to handle the large spikes of waste produced by an octopus. The general reef keeper community has erroneously demonized them as "nitrate factories", so be prepared to see that opinion parroted by many who have no experience with them on the reef forums. Both live rock and wet/dry filters support different species of aerobic (require oxygen) bacteria, which convert NH3 (ammonia) into NO3, and then into NO2 (nitrate). Anaerobic (can not tolerate oxygen) bacteria are required to convert NO2 (nitrate) into harmless Nitrogen gas (N2), and wet/dry filters provide no oxygen free place for these anaerobic bacteria to live. The deeper pores in live rock do provide an oxygen free place for anaerobic bacteria to thrive. As a result, systems with only a wet/dry filter allow nitrates to slowly build up, relying on water changes to remove them (thus their reputation as "nitrate factories"). In systems that use live rock, nitrates build up more slowly, or not at all because the anaerobic bacteria deep in the live rock are able to consume at least some of the nitrate produced by the bacteria at the more oxygen rich surface of the live rock. My solution is to use a wet/dry filter (to avoid spending hundreds of dollars on live rock) and to also add a "Remote Deep Sand Bed" (RDSB) to my system. A RDSB can support LOTS of anaerobic bacteria, and is literally dirt cheap to build (the cost of a 50 pound bag of play sand). I've kept a series of bimacs happy and well fed in 50 gallons of water for two years using 7 gallons of bio-balls in a wet/dry trickle filter, and a RDSB (a cost savings of about $400 - $600 over buying live rock)

 

[djkaty]

Hi Joe,

Ok, sorry if I misunderstood you about the buckets.

 

[djkaty]

The price for live rock is incredibly harsh btw - 140 Norwegian kroner per kg which I believe is about $10 per lb / $21 per kg. But I assume if you put a small amount of fresh live rock in the bacteria will eventually propagate to the surfaces of the ones that have died, no?

As for getting ready for the octopus, I have plenty of questions stacked up already but I'm going to read first and ask when the time gets closer, I just want to get the basic saltwater tank running and cycled first. The protein skimmer is rated for 2.5-3 times the size of the tank which is just about what I understood an octopus needs, generating 3 times the waste of a fish of the same mass. I have read about the bioballs too, but, let's get to this later I just want to focus on understanding what I'm doing at the moment and not causing any unnecessary death or expense.

 

[djkaty]

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[Joe-Ceph]

I followed the typical advice about how to "cycle" my tank, and ran into a very common problem that for some reason is not talked about much on the forums and so is easy to fall into. I'll outline the problem so that you can prepare for it.

Different species of bacteria are at work at each step in the nitrogen cycle.
Species 1 (Aerobic) converts: Ammonia => Nitrite (NH3 => NO3)
Species 2 (Aerobic) converts: Nitrite => Nitrate (N03 => NO2)
Species 3 (Anaerobic) converts: Nitrate => Nitrogen (NO2 => N2)

These species of bacteria are ubiquitous, and will spontaneously begin growing and multiplying if given a physical place to live (on live rock, bio balls, etc) and an abundant and constant food supply. The goal of "cycling" your aquarium is to build up populations of each of these three species of bacteria, in sufficient numbers to consume all of the waste produced by your tank inhabitants that is not removed by your skimmer and/or filter sock.

The term "cycling" usually means starting with a new system (almost no bacteria) and providing abundant ammonia so that "some" species 1 bacteria will grow, and convert the ammonia to nitrite, which provides abundant food for species 2. Then, given time, "some" species 2 bacteria will grow, providing an abundant supply of nitrate. If you have live rock and/or a RDSB (anaerobic environment (without oxygen)) then "some" species 3 bacteria will grow. You are supposed to monitor the levels of ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate over several weeks, watching each one rise as species x produces waste, and fall as species x+1 reproduces and eventually consumes that waste. When you see nitrate (the last consumable in the series) levels start to decline, you know the "cycle" is finished and your tank is ready for animals.

The two big problem I fell into, that nobody told me about were:
1) You must add ammonia daily throughout the cycle, not just once at the beginning.
2) You must gradually increase the amount of ammonia you add to the system until you reach a daily amount that is roughly equal to the amount of ammonia that the population of animals you wish to support will produce (the amount an octopus will produce)

"Well of course" you might say. But the advice most newbies get (because of the incomplete understanding of the nitrogen cycle that most of the advice givers have) is to put a small piece of shrimp in the new tank for a few days and take it out when when it has rotted enough for you to read high ammonia levels (they don't usually tell you to keep adding ammonia after that).
The other method that is often recommended is to get a few small tough fish that you don't care much about, and let them live in your new tank. Feed them every day, let the ammonia build up, and hope it doesn't kill any of the fish. If the high ammonia doesn't kill them before a population of species 1 bacteria grows large enough to eat all the ammonia, they get to enjoy high nitrites for a while as the species 2 population grows, then high nitrates as the species 3 population grows. This "cycle" takes several weeks. The advantage of this not-so-nice method is that you keep feeding the fish every day, so that when the "cycle" is done the populations of bacteria are at a size that is able to handle the amount of waste produced by a few tough fish. The problem is that the noobie thinks "ok, my tanks has cycled, so it's time remove to the few tough fish and put in my octopus". If the octopus produces much more waste than the few tough fish did, then there will be an ammonia spike because the population of species 1 bacteria can't eat the increased amount of ammonia fast enough, and the octopus will have to live through another several week "cycle". If your octopus isn't as tough as the fish were, it will die. If you notice the ammonia spike, and frantically do water changes to save your octopus (sound familiar?) then the population of species 1 bacteria won't grow much larger because your water changes are using up their food supply (ammonia). That's a bumpy road. Better to fully understand the nitrogen cycle so that you can fill in the gaps in the standard tank cycling advice and slowly increase ammonia up to the proper level, and let your bio filter stabilize there, before you get an octopus.

I don't like the idea of making animals put up with the bad conditions of a "cycle", so the next time I cycle a tank, I plan to dose the tank with daily and increasing doses of ammonia (ammonia chloride?). That means I'll have to estimate how much ammonia per day an octopus excretes, so I'm hoping that won't be too hard to do.

 

[Joe-Ceph]

The protein skimmer is rated for 2.5-3 times the size of the tank which is just about what I understood an octopus needs, generating 3 times the waste of a fish of the same mass

Watch out for the tank size recommendations of skimmers. They are notoriously greatly exaggerated, although some brands more than others. You really need to hear from people who have used them to know what to believe.