• Looking to buy a cephalopod? Check out Tomh's Cephs Forum, and this post in particular shares important info about our policies as it relates to responsible ceph-keeping.

new octo keeper advice

Joined
Sep 14, 2008
Messages
3
hi, i have been reading up as much as i possibly can on cepholopods on this forum as well as on multiple other cites and feel like i am ready to try and placing on in an aquarium. I have a 50 gallon tank that has lots of live rock. I wanted to know what species you would suggest purchasing? I have looked into mercatoris but the general concensus is that they wont ever even be seen. What other species would you suggest? also i have seen these animals for sale on a number of web sites such as liveaquaria.com and they just say " octopus" i am open for all suggestions. I do have a pair of clown fish that were given to me in the tank now, im assuming they are going to be consumed eventually? thanks for the help in advance.
 
Welcome to Tonmo, John.

Assuming all your filtration is adequate and your tank has been setup long enough to mature (3 months) I would suggest Abdopus aculeatus or Octopus hummelincki for a 50 gallon tank. Both are day active species and don't grow too big for that size of aquarium.

Liveaquaria.com usually provides Abdopus aculeatus as their Indo-Pacific species but on one occasion someone here got an Octopus luteus instead which grows considerably larger and is nocturnal. Not sure what Caribbean species they usually offer, as they don't ever seem to be in-stock.

MarineDepotLive.com usually has Abdopus aculeatus (for $27) and has been known to sell Octopus hummelincki (USA - East Coast) but they do offer a variety of choices, unfortunately listed by location instead of species, but location is enough to get a general idea of what kind you might get.

Sometimes they will be more than happy to accommodate you by answering questions and emailing photos if you take the time.

On a side note, right now might not be a good time to order Abdopus aculeatus, as mine just recently laid eggs and is currently on the verge of death, might just be that season.

Most important thing you can do is take your time.

Again, welcome to TONMO. Absorb as much of the info as you can before you bite the bullet.
 
John_Woodward;125267 said:
am i right in thinking that the octo will devour the fish? or will they cause him stress instead?

Unfortunately, they are more than likely to cause stress and slow down your introduction time (my hummelincki did not even like a small guppy sized fish in his tank). The current thought is that fish, particularly clowns and damsels, are likely to pick on an octo but I have not read any direct reports to that effect. The lack of direct reporting may be because few of us keep fish in the same tank though.
 
Yeah it's generally a bad idea to keep fish with octopuses. A few of us have maintained Abdopus with non-aggressive, non-territorial fish, but damsels and clowns are notorious for attacking anything that they perceive as an intruder.
 
i often wondered throughout my readings why people did not try to put octopus into established tanks ( large enough ones), i always assumed that the octopus would eventually kill most everything in there. Do you think that a large enough tank that has a large amount of rock and hiding places could sucessfully house multiple species? i do not plan to do this, i plan on just having the tank set up for the octopus as i have other reef tanks already but it is something that has crossed my mind, although most suggest against it.
 
:welcome: to TONMO

In general, we don't recommend mixing octos with fish or other octos, since it's rather common for that to end badly, one way or another. There have been some cases where it worked out OK, but at a lot of the time, someone eats someone, or the animals are so stressed out that their health is impacted, and they're too uncomfortable to interact or show interesting behaviors.
 
John,
The Seattle aquarium is trying that. No exactly a household sized aquarium though. The only notorious report has been that the resident GPO killed and partially ate several of the small sharks. I don't know what, if anything they did after videoing the event though. Montaray Bay was successful keeping a Great White for 17 months (longest ever to survive in captivity and I believe only the second at all) but the preditory instinct eventually required that they release it.

On a smaller scale, Dombroski (very experienced reef keeper) experiment with a "natural" environment with success where others have failed. With octopues, a lot depends upon the personality of the individual. Mine are in species only tanks but I have serious MTS so the other tanks have other things :razz:
 
Don't do it!

I thought I'd chime here to share my story.....

About 2 years ago, I got my first octo - a medium sized Briarreus. I put him in a well established tank with 1 medium sized damsal and 1 small tomato clown. I actually tried removing these guys first, but they refused.... I figured the octo would just eat the fish and that would be that. Unfortunately, they harassed him and harassed him until he eventually stressed too much and died:goodbye: I tried catching the fish and the octo for about a week, all no avail.....

Please, don't put your new octo in with any fish, even if they seem innocent - I learned the hard way:banghead:
 
It may be a little late but I recently got a small Abdopus Aculeatus? Mucktopus said that she thinks they breed year round so you get what they catch large or small.
 

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