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First octo setup (pre cycle)

@sean1 I don't have the Seneye system. I have too many tanks to monitor :roll:. My tanks are pretty simple affairs and I let the LR do much of the work (except lugging the water for the weekly water changes and top offs) :biggrin2:

So far the best luck I have had with mysis is to put them in a bio-orb with live rock and an air ring (no other filtration), change half the water once a month(ish) and feed them twice a day with either frozen rotifers or daphnia. I have managed to keep a few alive for well over a month. Not enough survive to use as food for cuttles but this is far better than anything else I have tried.
 
So they were doing a group order from LA and I got in and decided to test some feeder shrimp out... With minimal success in my 12gal nano. The size and seemingly only postmortem cannibalization were my main reason for trying them out as possible cuttle food. Seems like the excessive water flow of this nano, I picked up used and with a pump upgrade I think, keeps them out of the water column and the overflows are just big enough to suck them in. Would these even be a viable food for baby cuttles?

I think now I should have listened to their recommendation of a 5gal bucket + an airstone lol.
 
Grass shrimp are good food for adult cuttles but have not worked with hatchlings (I HAVE fed them to very young octopuses with success but not until the octos were slighly larger than the shrimp). They are difficult to breed but do keep easily in a 10 gallon. Your 12g nano should have been fine but they do tend to get into any overflow. I keep them in an old fashioned, cheap 10 gallon with an area sectioned off with an inexpensive simple plastic mesh divider and keep live rock scraps in the small divided section and have an in-tank filter/areator for oxygenation and waste removal. I change out a couple of gallons a month and feed daily. With the last batch I also added a couple of small saltwater crabs to scavenge left over food and they lived for months. Ultimately I fed out the remaining but expected they would have continued to survive until a normal old age death. I MAY have had a couple of hatchlings survive (based on size when I emptied the remainder into the cuttle tank) but definitely not enough to keep a population going.

Freshwater ghost shrimp are supposed to be easy to raise (it is unlikely you have the physical space to raise a major food supply) but my one attempt was a dismal failure. They are close in nutritional value to their saltwater cousins and have been used as a primary food for cuttlefish (but, again, not hatchlings).
 
Hey there, Sean1. Circling back to the matter of oxygen, have you had a chance to tinker and determine whether your levels are what you want?

I finally got my little test kit in and my tank did appear to be on the low end. Not bad, though. Sister Golden Tail Surprise (our damsel fish) never gulped at the surface or anything, but our levels were at a 6 when the ideal would have been a 7 or 8, and octos of course are better off at the higher end.

I've since been experimenting with ways to boost the O2 and testing along at each attempt. Nothing I tried has had any impact: bubbler in sump, chaetomorpha in fuge, other plants in tank (and fuge), and using phytonutrients to boost 'pod populations. Parameters have remained stable for pH, ammonia, and nitrites/trates with the exception of a bump in nitrates when adding the phyto slurries, though that has since stabilized. Other than that, I haven't added anything to the tank--no buffers or dosing of any kind. No one in there except Sister and a host of small inverts. Have also tested at various times of day, as well as testing while light was on for 1+ hour and then off for 1+ hour.

Anyway, the iterative but fruitless experiments continued for a few weeks until I finally just walked off in a huff. Now, after doing nothing but a weekly water change over the holidays, the oxygen is reading at 7-- up a full point. How very cute. (Not!)

A few other notes:
  • The test kit
    I don't actually know whether my test kit is even worth a dern, nor have I any faith in my ability to compare clear pink water to printed pink blocks on card stock. The pink water never seems to match any of those blocks! However, even though I may not be picking the correct color on the scale, it's probably safe to say that the color has intensified, which indicates that the oxygen levels, whatever they truly are, are denser.
  • New tank
    My tank is in "late cycle stage", which means that it actually finished cycling months (and months) ago and has since been fit for fish, inverts, etc. But it's still a new tank. Maybe it's just one of those things where the longer it runs, the greater the ability to support oxygen densities, other gas exchanges, and better living through biochemistry. :smile:
  • Clumsy water changes
    I've sometimes let my saltwater mix sit for 1-5 days before using it to change tank water. I don't know what the true limit is on letting a salt / RODI mixture sit around before it's growing bacteria and is no longer suitable for the tank-- or whether it has impact on O2.
  • Skimmer died
    We had a protein skimmer that died of old age a couple of weeks ago, right around the time I was adding plants. While the O2 levels didn't seem to be impacted one way or another, it's possible that we'd have seen a bump in O2 sooner if the skimmer had been spinning the entire time.
  • Circulation
    Circulation in my tank is concentrated at the surface. There are probably stagnant zones toward the base of the live rock. Once I improve circulation in there it may also impact oxygen density.
So on the whole, I still have absolutely no idea how to regulate oxygen levels in my tank, but it may just be one of those things that works itself out on its own. If you've discovered anything on your end I'd love to hear about it.
 
I can't offer suggestions as I have never texted O2 but please keep posting your experiments and results (or lack there of). Is your sump open top or covered?

One new test would be to add an air stone to your saltwater holding tank. I always did this for the seahorses (back when I kept them) and still continuously run some form of mixing pump or aeration in the holding tanks (I have two). I have never been sure this has been of value so it you experiment, please post the results :sagrin:
 

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