i cant find my octo

mikeg

Cuttlefish
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Oct 27, 2008
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dose any1 have any idea how to find my octo
i have a dwarf octopus in my 75 gallon and i havent seen him in about 2 weeks i want to put him in another tank but i cant find him dose any 1 no how to get him out
thankss mike
 
Well... welcome to TONMO Mike.

Anytime you get a new octopus it's likely to hide for several days. 2 weeks is a long time though. You could have gotten a female that was ready to lay eggs and now it might be taking care of them. Or it might just be nocturnal and only coming out after you've gone to bed. Or it's right in front of you but since the tank it's in is so big you can't find it.

Has it eaten? Do you know for sure it couldn't have climbed out? That's the main thing I think about when I can't find an octopus in its tank.

Assuming your octopus truly is a dwarf, it's possible you will never see it in a tank as large as a 75 gallon assuming you have a sufficient amount of live rock in the tank. If it's an O. mercatoris (seems to be the most common dwarf currently) you are pretty much guaranteed to have a strictly nocturnal octopus which means you would have your best luck finding it late at night, in complete darkness with exception of a red light.

Dwarfs are more easily viewed in smaller tanks, since the overall area of the tank is smaller... less hiding places to search through.

Try baiting a small container with a small live crab or maybe some raw shrimp. Make a hole small enough the octopus can climb in. Put it in before you go to bed, check it in the morning. You might add a shell big enough for the octopus to climb into also so maybe it will decide to stay there.

I wouldn't add another octopus until you are certain of this ones whereabouts.

Good luck.
 
thanks alot for responding
im almost 100 percent sure he hasn't gotten out the tank its sealed pretty good
but i mean Ive checked up on him the latest is at 4 am
i have even teared my tank apart taking one peace of live rock at a time and inspecting it
but how can i make this red light i will try with that
and im not to sure if he has been eating the ghost shrimp ive been feeding him
can i use that as bait?
 
Moving rocks around looking for it can really create a sense of distrust/fear for you. Don't do that anymore :smile: That will surely prolong the hiding.

I would just find a red clamp-on style light like you buy at Home Depot, costs about 5 bucks and put a red incandescent bulb in it (works for me).

Anything that moves is likely to draw its attention so as long as the ghost shrimp are surviving in your tank, yes, they should work as bait. I just suggested raw shrimp because it seems to put off a lot of scent.
 
another ting is that octopuses are hard to see even if theyre sitting literally right infront of you. If its ur first octopus, you may or may not be familiar with the incredible capacity of their camouflage capability (believe me, when i would show guests my octos, it'd take them 10-15 minutes to see them even if they were sitting right in the open.)
 
ya knowing my luck the poor thing is sitting right in front of me
but i have put a large kinder surprise egg in there with a lot of raw shrimp and one hole large enough for him to enter from so we will see how that works out
i will let you know how it goes
thank you
Mike
 
ok so i tried that out last night he or she didn't even touch the food
and im also having doubts now that it is even still in the tank
if it were to escape ware would it go because i have looked all over for it
but is it possible that it has died in a piece of the live rock?
or like you said had babies
 
They can get surprisingly far outside the tank if they do get out. As for where it would go, who knows?

I'd just watch the tank late at night with the red light for the next several days.
 
I'm really intrigued here as I've had this "problem" before and it was either one of two things as Animal Mother said, it had gotten out or it was a female and it laid eggs. I didn't have a red dwarf, just a "plain ol' octopus" though.

So, mikeg, any luck here?
 
nope

no no luck
but i just realized that about 12 of my blue legged hermits have disappeared i am very curios to know ware they have gone
is this octo still in there? like my tank is completely open on the top now and has been for about a month i dont understand
 
IF the dwarf was a mercatoris, it is quite likely. Not much octoproofing is necessary and if they have good hiding places in the live rock and plenty of food they can disappear for long periods (one of the reasons I recommend smaller tanks for them). MIA (Missing In Aquarium) would disappear for weeks and then decide he wanted a shrimp treat. I was never sure when he actually died. Wiley was pronounced missing and assumed dead at least twice and is now going on 13 months old and finally installed in a smaller tank.
 

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