IME, I don't think you have to worry about the hole if it is small and not accessble by climbing up something. Keep the skimmer.
The perfect feeding routine has not been established and I think most of us go with watching how the animal eats and adjust. Roy recommends feeding every other or every third day but then giving multiple food items based on a VERY long lived bimac they kept at Berkeley. Most of ours eat daily with one day a week fasting. As they age, their appetite decreases but a female about to brood will comsume increasingly larger quantitys. Needless to say, if Hope only wants food every other day, then that is likely the schedule that suits her right now. If she is eating daily, then I would suggest fasting one day a week. Do note that when CaptFish tried to cut back on Legs food she went on a rampage and killed stuff she has ignored in the tank as well as showing aggression towards him. Once he started feeding her what she wanted she went back to a non-menapausal female
If remains are hard to remove, be sure you have a good clean up crew. I am very partial to orange brittle stars, thorny starfish and serpents. All are meat eating and only the orange brittle messes with the octos (looking for food scraps) and is quickly ignored or pushed away once the two acclimate. The orange brittles actually have a little personality (we call ours Pesky and Pesky II) and are sometimes daytime visible (and always at feeding time). Oddly, I have never had them bother a dieing octo.
I have only had one briareus that would play hide-and-seek for any period of time (Kooah) but it seems to be very common with the Aculeatus (and those little horns popping up can't help but put a huge grin on your face).
The perfect feeding routine has not been established and I think most of us go with watching how the animal eats and adjust. Roy recommends feeding every other or every third day but then giving multiple food items based on a VERY long lived bimac they kept at Berkeley. Most of ours eat daily with one day a week fasting. As they age, their appetite decreases but a female about to brood will comsume increasingly larger quantitys. Needless to say, if Hope only wants food every other day, then that is likely the schedule that suits her right now. If she is eating daily, then I would suggest fasting one day a week. Do note that when CaptFish tried to cut back on Legs food she went on a rampage and killed stuff she has ignored in the tank as well as showing aggression towards him. Once he started feeding her what she wanted she went back to a non-menapausal female
If remains are hard to remove, be sure you have a good clean up crew. I am very partial to orange brittle stars, thorny starfish and serpents. All are meat eating and only the orange brittle messes with the octos (looking for food scraps) and is quickly ignored or pushed away once the two acclimate. The orange brittles actually have a little personality (we call ours Pesky and Pesky II) and are sometimes daytime visible (and always at feeding time). Oddly, I have never had them bother a dieing octo.
I have only had one briareus that would play hide-and-seek for any period of time (Kooah) but it seems to be very common with the Aculeatus (and those little horns popping up can't help but put a huge grin on your face).