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Houdini my GPO

Octopuses will be happy with room lighting so any tank lighting is for humans and other things in the aquarium. If you have a small fan (or a big one for this purpose) that you can blow between the light fixture and the tank, this will help a little with the heat. Less with the temps you need for Houdini than my own, warm water tanks but it will lower the effect several degrees.
 
it is hard to see because of the light but I have added two peaces of glass between the light and the top glass and the top glass is now cool.
do you think the seaweed will do well in low light . I am worried that the seaweed will start to die with low light and kill my water quality.
 
I would not put seaweed in an operational tank, there is just too much "stuff" in it that will die (or is already dead) and then there is the problem with sea lice (at least on the East coast). It might not be bad cycling one as it will add a lot of dead stuff and a few live things to help consume it. I have not had a lot of luck keeping macro algae alive and have wanted to try a separate refugium to experiment but have not done so.

I have a non-ceph tank that has volunteered some interesting macro, oddly at the bottom of a 4' tank (it is lighted with a smaller MH). The tank is at least 6 years old and this showed up about 3 months ago. I am thinking it must have come from something like a snail that I have added to the tank as I don't believe it could have been dormant all this time.

Oddly, I have another patch of a different macro growing in my largest (and least populated) tank as well (just noticed this weekend). The new algae is quite attractive and I would like to move it to a different tank to add color but am afraid of damaging it. If it continues to grow well where it is I will try to propagate some elsewhere as this tank does not have high lighting.
 
I removed most of the seaweed and plants we found . I will see how the little I left will do in the tank first.

:hmm: I have not seen Houdini for days now. I would think that is a good sign , dead octopus are easy to find.
 
will this fish harm Houdini

besides grass shrimp the bait shop has mud-suckers in their cold tank.I was thinking of putting one or two in with Houdini so I can see something move in the tank, Houdini is still not coming out. would I have to worry that the mud-sucker will harm Houdini ?
 

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It is not that you are being ignored but only some of our educators and students have experience with the coldwater animals and that is usually restricted to a lab environment. The general response, however, is NO Fish because one is likely to pick on the other.
 
I do understand that this system is big time different from my 76 deg tanks and pond.
thanks for any help any one may know.

I have only seen Houdini once in a small hole next day he was gone.. he never comes out. always scared and hiding, I always keep live grass shrimp in the tank for him to eat at night and one live crab that has been with him since day one . ( their was two crabs he ate one ) I am going to put him back in to the 10 gal tank for a while so I could train him to eat frozen food and get accustom to us around him, I have read in other threads to train a octopus to eat frozen food off a stick, that will not happen in the 200 gal. he is to small and the tank is to big.
 
IF you can FIND him in the 200 gallon, you can train to stick feed. The key is finding them or being patient enough to let them find you. One thing you can try with the lights off and with the aid of a red light is putting food on a stick and rubbing the stick lightly on the live rock close to where you saw him. The vibration will sometimes bring out an inquisitive arm but don't expect this to happen in 5 minutes, arrange to sit quietly for perhaps half an hour. Once they learn that the stick brings food it gets easier. Once they learn that humans bring food they often start pacing demanding supper.

A ten gallon worries me about water quality and would not recommend something that small for even a dwarf. Their eating habits too easily foul a tank and 10 gallons is not enough buffer. As mentioned, I have never kept this species but I have found all very young octos I have kept to be very shy until somewhere around 4 months old. This is a longer lived species and I suspect the 4 to 5 month personality change has something to do with sexual maturity so I don't know how that would translate to a GPO. I've only seen GPO's in aquariums and they were all much, much larger than your little guy.
 
Thanks DWhatley , sound good ,I agree the answer is not putting him in the 10 gal tank. I decided to remove some of the rocks that made it hard to find him. no wonder I could not find him, he was in a big rock that has a cave in it and all you see is his eye when looking in the 1/4" hole. looks like that is his home. I also removed all the lights from the tank, the light in the room is enough to light up the tank for now...

Please keep the info coming DWhatley , I understand now why he is just hiding , I would assume at this point in his life all he wants to do is hide and not be eaten ( if he was in the wild ).... I had a coconut Octopus and he was out in about three days making me think after a week that Houdini did not show him self that something was wrong but I realize now that the coconut octopus was more older then Houdini.
 
Just don't take out most of his hiding places. He needs to be able to hide and will den elsewhere if he thinks he has been discovered and is vunerable. I would start offering food on a stick in front of his den. If he investigates, be sure the suckers come in contact with the food. Even if he does not take the food, continue to offer at the same time each day. If you offer shrimp leave the shell on (Yeti still won't have anything to do with it shelled but readily takes it if the shell is on :roll:). Once he gets used to you offering food and takes it daily, I would add back some/all of rock.
 
Sea slug

I came across a yellow with black spotted sea slug ... has any one had any problems with adding a sea slugs into a Octopus tanks?


Houdini is doing OK, still just staying in his den. started taking food from a stick when I waved in front of his den but I still have not found something he will eat that has been frozen.. he always just spites it out of his den after a bit... at the moment he is still just eating shore crabs , I fine parts around his den in the morning.....
 
There is no known problem with cucs or slugs but the slug may get eaten (cuc's are left alone). However, I don't have any real experience with cold water animals. One thing you should probably avoid is anything that produces copious slim as the octos are very sensitive to anything that might coat their gills. In the wild they can swim away but not in an aquarium.
 
Hi Jsshark1,

Sounds like you have an interesting set up going on. I'm currently keeping a GPO but not at my house. With cold water octopus I've usually found the small ones will hide a lot and generally forage at night, once houdini gets older I imagine it will spend a lot more time outside of its den. You could gel the lights so that they are not as bright if you think that's why he may be hiding. Give him time on the frozen, make sure it is fully defrosted and maybe slightly warm if anything and I would start of on crab, also maybe mix some live crab scent with the frozen food , for most octopus it's the atp in the crab that gets them excited, I've found with frozen if it is too cold they sometimes can't taste the crab in the water especially with GPO's when the water is already very cold anyway. Anyway I'd like to say good luck and keep us updated
 
Nice to hear from you Perke! Could it be that fiddler crabs give off more of a "scent" than say a mithrax? Fiddlers seem to be the universal food for the smaller animals but they are really almost a land crab and not likely to be a main food in the wild.
 

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