• 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.

Corals in tank?

Journal time

:biggrin2: Please start a journal on you new guy and include the info you have on your last post.

Brine is not an appropriate food and it is likely to be very hungry. You might try using a pipette with a thawed frozen mysis if you have some handy (shore shrimp even better).

Do you know what body of water was its original home? What colors are you seeing? White at rest and red/brown when excited?
 
new guy

when I got him he was hiding in a cerith snail shell so i would only seee a tentacle and an eyeball. The shell is empty now so I guess he is hiding in the rock. My friend at the LFS said it was red/brown and white at whitish at rest. I am not sure where he is hiding to fed by pipette. he is from Florida.

Recomm on water temp?at 75 now
 
Given the size of its home and coloration my guess is mercatoris. If this is the case, she/he will be nocturnal and you will need to set up red lighting to see your little fella active. Below are a couple of links to journals from captive raised mercs with links to their wild caught mother and captive bred children for you to review and see if there is a match in behavior and looks:

Varys' babies (O. mercatoris)
Trapper's Babies - Tank Raised Mercatoris

There are other good journals as well and you can find links to the species if you will scan the List of our Octopuses 2008 (we are just starting to see some for 2009).
 
When Colin and I were wriitng our book on keeping cephs, we had to wrestle with the question of corals. Our conclusion was that our advice had to be conservative and work for everyone.

We knew that some people had had success with other corals, and some had not. I personally had seen my octopus recoil when touching aptasia.

So, we listed some safe corals, such as mushrooms. You can have a good-looking tank with the safe corals. If the tank is large and the octopus can avoid the stinging corals (like they can in the ocean), that might work. Or, you might get lucky. But, when planning for a successful tank, be conservative!

Nancy
 
nocturnal

Well the dilema I see is good light needed for coral(VHO, PC) but the octo being nocturnal. I could light it from 12A to 8A and then hope to see the octo during the day w no light on. But then the coral will be down.

Suggestions? How do you coral keepers do it?
 
With a mercatoris, because it is fully nocturnal and daylight activity is rare to non-existent until the last week or so of their lives, I use and would suggest feather dusters, serpent/brittle stars, caribbean red mushrooms (these seen to need little light to survive but thrive in higher light conditions - the will look brownish rather than red though - a little window light helps). You can try a deeper water gorgonian if you have can put one at the point of highest flow.
 
I would avoid stinging corals and anemones, Also keep in mind coral needs light to survive, so make sure your octopus can handle the amount and intensity before you attempt to add any coral.
 

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