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i think im ready for my first octo

joe ceph. you are in no way being a PIA. i am glad that you are helping me to be so thurogh. and i am thankfull that, with your help, im getting more confident about keeping this animal

i totally agree that about 5% of the genral public is crazy. but in a tattoo shop we get WAY more crazies. closer to like 50%. when we first thought about putting an octo in here, that was my first concern. i was so affraid of some a-hole customer tapping on the glass or opening the lids and hurting our animal. but we have had this tank in here for a few months and i have noticed that most customers ignore it. it has an open top right now, and i haven't found anything in there that i didn't put there. i had a clown fish in there for a few weeks, and peolple kinda noticed him. but for the most part people just walk right past it. i am still concerend about it though. we have a reseptionist who sits right in front of the tank, and she is there all day. she will not be happy at all if someone messes with our tank, and she has the right to kick someone out for doing so. but i still want to make the lids as customer proof as possible. i was planning on making it noisy some how, attach a bell or something. so nobody could sneek in when the receptionist isn't looking. i just need my lids to get here so i can start playing around with them.

as far as cycling. i understand that ballancing the micro organisms to what the tank gets fed is very important. for the first 3 weeks it sat empty. then after the initial ammonia spike settled down, we put a few fish in. i have had up to 4 fish in there at a time. i have been moving fish around my tanks at home and used this work tank as qt tank for a bit. so it has had at least 1 fish in it since early april. right now, most of the fish have gone back home. i still have a flasher wrasse in there, a choc chip star, 2 peppermint shrimp, and about 20 or so snails. i feed the wrasse way too much twice a day. i have been doing this on purpose for the exact reason you mentioned. i don't want my messy eating octo to change what the tank is used to. if anything the tank might get a break with only 2 dead fiddlers a day. i get a bit of algea growth and i go in and brush it off by hand when i do water changes. other than that my tank is pretty used to accepting a lot of waste food. if my lids take take to much longer to get here i may bring another fish from home so the wrasse doesn't get lonely.

i am hoping that i don't get the little nocternal cousin of A.aculeatus. but if i do, i am prepared for it. the lids are being machined to within 1/16" tolerance. i also have a tube of sylicone to plug any holes that are too big. and i also found this cool red led strip i can mount on top for nightime viewing.

as far as my tank mantanence. i do weekly water changes of about 5 gallons. i get the water from my own 5 stage ro/di unit at home and i mix it with instant ocean. i have a 5 gal bucket that sits at the shop with clean SW mix in it. and every week i use that for the water change and replace the bucket. so i always have 5g on hand just in case. i don't test the water that often any more cuz it's always zero. but i have the test kits here at work. i will be testing more once the octo gets here and im keeping a close eye on tank permaeters. mainly testing ammonia, nitrates, nitrites, ph, and phosphates. im not too worried about calcium and magnesium cuz theres no coral in there.
 
It sounds like you've got this well thought out, and are preparing well.
tat2spyder;179046 said:
the lids are being machined to within 1/16" tolerance.
That's great for holes in the top made for plumbing, but if the whole lid needs to slip down into a groove, you will want a little bit of extra room for the top. If the cuts are 1/16" under, you're okay (1/8" would be better), but if they're dead on, or 1/16th over, you could have a problem. When I build my acrylic lid I made it to fit exactly into the channel in the factory plastic rim on the tank. I wish I'd made my lid 1/8"-3/16" smaller, for two reasons:
1) My lid had nice sharp 90 degree edges, but the edges at the bottom of the channel were a little rounded, so my lid didn't fit all the way down.
2) Acrylic absorbs a very tiny amount of water, and expands a very tiny bit, so if your new lid starts out "almost too tight", it might become "a little too tight" after a few days on your tank. I'm only talking about a few thousandths of an inch, but that's not zero, so it's a good idea to design in a little wiggle room.

I had to get some sand paper and take a little off the edges of my top, so the next one will be designed to be maybe 1/8" too small. My top has multiple pieces that are connected by hinges, and I wish I'd left about 1/32" between the hinged pieces. Between the small amount of swelling, and/or a little salt creep into the space between the two hinged pieces, the lid sometimes only closes 99%, and the latch doesn't always engage by itself. That also puts a lot of stress on the hinges, which might crack some day.

It's great that your acrylic top will be 1/2" thick. Acrylic tops seem to often bow, wither because the bottom absorbs more water than the top (theory) or because of hot lights on top (guess). 1/2" thick acrylic is likely to stay flat.

Also, keep in mind that it is easy to drill holes and even tap threads into acrylic. Nylon bolts can be used to modify the top, hold it down, hold things to it, make a latch, or whatever.
 
yeah once these lids get here im prob gonna have to modify them a bit. i got my dremel tool all warmed up and ready. i did go with the 1/2" cuz i was planning on stacking bricks on top, and i had the same theory about the lights heating up the acrylic and causing it to warp. im thinking maybe i should drill a bunch of little 1/16" holes all over the top. that way i won't be so stressed over gas exchange.
 
Even 1/2 inch will warp a little. I have found that securing the edges minimizes most of the warping even in thinner acrylic if the edges are secured at all times (regardless of the need for keeping an animal inside). Where I have only had LED lights that sit about 8" off the top of the tank, I have not had the warping (Diego's tank) so I am staying with the temperature difference theory :biggrin2:
 
I've found that it I put a piece of wood under the acrylic when I drill holes in it, and drill a bit into the wood, I don't chip the exit end of the hole in the acrylic. You need to worry about the drill bit getting hot and melting the acrylic, so use a sharp drill bit, slow speed, and maybe run a little water on the acrylic, or drill through a little puddle, to wet/cool the bit. The acrylic will dull the bit fast, so maybe buy extra hard bits, and/or sharpen or swap them out when they get dull. I'd go with 1/8" holes unless the octopus is likely to be really small.
Since drilling holes is such a pain, and may not be enough to solve the gas exchange problem anyway, I'd plan to use a sump, or have a large enough open Hang On Back type device to allow for gas exchange. Circulating the water through an open bucket of bio-balls would do the trick (my tank is totally sealed on top, but I have a wet/dry trickle filter which easily handles the gas exchange
 
ok so i got my lids in. im going to try posting pics
 

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Slick!
When you drill into the black plastic be careful about hitting the edge of the glass. Those look like metal latches; won't they rust when salt water gets onto them? Most stainless steel will rust in salt water, and galvanized steel would definitely rust. Could you use acrylic latches?

Is there any kind of barrier (screen) keeping an octopus from going against the water flow and climbing up into the HOB filter(s)? I've never used HOB gear, but I would be worried about it. Does anybody have experience with HOB device security?
 
im very confident that my octopus will not be able to escape this. there is less than 1/16 gap anywhere. and with 4 of those gate latches on each lid it's pretty rock solid. my concern now is if i am going to get eneugh gas exchange. the skimmer pumps in a lot of air and the mechanical filter (on the bottom pic) has an open top. do you guys think i should drill a bunch of holes in the lids?

other than that i think im ready to go. right?
 
yes the latches will prob rust. they said they where stainless, but im pretty sure they wont last too long. but then again my octopus isn't going live too long either. a year if i'm lucky, and im confident those latches will last that long. i have thought of acrylic latches. but these steel ones were on hand at home depot. and they were pretty cheap. so if all goes well with this first octo i can try installing a diffrent latching mechanism before i do another octo.

im sure the octo won't be able to crawl into the hob filters. the water falls through thin slits that are slightly larger than 1/8 inch. so unless i get a super tiny dwarf i should be good to go.
 
im sure the octo won't be able to crawl into the hob filters. the water falls through thin slits that are slightly larger than 1/8 inch. so unless i get a super tiny dwarf i should be good to go.

my 55 is the same and i have never had any problems with them crawling there, not even the dwarfs tried.
 
With the tight fit on the HOB you might want to install a baffel on the top to catch and redirect splashed back into the slit. An angled piece of acrylic with side tabs to surround the spillway will likely work well and should be fairly easy to make.

I have only used a HOB with the dwarfs and have not had a problem however, I have had baby O. briareus climb into my return pipe holes and live there until they outgrew the holes. I have also had them climb into the overflow of a drilled tank but the larger ones were not a problem. I would not trust a HOB with a bimac so a lot will depend upon the species, size and individual animal.

We DO drill all our acrylic tops with peg board style holes (avoid about 3 inches from the edge or only drill the lids if you do this). I have never done a before and after temp measurement to see how effective they really are but always make Neal drill them when we set up a new tank (we actually use a plastic peg board as a template to make them look nice).
 
i super glued a little airline tubing around the skimmer output.gives it a nice channel for the water to sit. it was leaking out a bit before. but now its running perfectly. im drilling about 20 or 30 1/8" holes in each lid as well. then i shouldn't have any issues with gas exchange.

so am i ready to order my octopus?
 
tat2spyder;178162 said:
im also going to be orderind either fiddler crabs or shore shrimp from this online site from St Augustine florida.

First congrats and good luck. You have been given some very good advice here.

I live down the road from ST Augustine and am curious if you wouldn't mind either posting the link to this website you plan on getting crab/shrimp from and or PM it to me. This may help me as well if I can PU instead of order online... Thanks
 

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