• 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 Octopus owner

Lime;123731 said:
Hah Shea! I was thinking of Ocho for a name for my octopus when I get one LOL. :smile: Just found that to be kind of funny. :biggrin2:

Great minds think alike :wink: I have decided on Ocho! It just sounds better than flow.
 
Thanks dwhatley I'll try that. Now about age, each arm is about 5-6" and the mantle is about 3" any ideas? The LFS estimated about 4-5 months but they also said she would live for about 3 years and I knew that was wrong so my confidence is not fully on their side.
 
Unfortunately, octos of the same species come in all sizes so age is impossible to determine by size most of the time (with some exception when they are very young but then the species is harder to determine for the aquarist). I noticed a lot of color and skin changes when Octane first arrived even though he was quite large (and I feared a very short relationship). As he aged, he showed less dimension in his skin but that may have had more to do with familiarity and loss of environment concern. I did note that he napped more and more as he aged and his play time was shorter but he would want to play several times in the evening rather than one long session. Not very helpful, I know but I have only had the one ... so far.
 
I had Octane for 7 months. He was thought to be full grown upon arrival but continued to grow. He was starting into sesenence but climbed out of a carelessly left open tank and died earlier than nature intended. I am looking for another hummelincki now.
 
I kept two, and neither lasted a month. They were both relatively small in comparison to Octane. The first one just mysteriously died and I found my bahama starfish eating it, so I blamed the starfish because it was acting fine until that day. The second one was missing an eye when I got it and it appeared to be infected. Several other members that got theirs from the same source in the same time frame had similar experiences so it was most likely something to do with the collection methods.

If I find another reliable source when I have an available tank I'm definitely getting another hummelincki. You scored bigtime.
 
I hope you find another Hummelincki. They truly are amazing pets. I wasn't able to fish out the damsels from her tank, but they have all disappeared and ocho doesn't want to eat anything I give her. So I am assuming she decided to have herself a little snack :smile:. But it's weird that she pays no attention to the snails or hermit crabs in her tank (except when she picks up a hermit crab and carries it around the tank once or twice) but has made no attempt to eat any of them. I have heard mixed suggestions about keeping octos with corals, anyone wanna share their opinion/experience?
 
Octane would carry around small snail/hermits in their shells too and now I wonder if there was something ON the shell itself that caused this behavior. I would see him with one very close to the beak every couple of months but the only snails he ate were the larger ones when he was first introduced to the tank. When I saw him carrying around the small snail shell, I ordered the larger ones that I knew he had eaten in the past, thinking he wanted a change in diet. I think he may have eaten one or two but he left most of them alone and I don't think he ever ate a hermit (they may have actually killed the couple of snails that I assumed Octane ate). My mercatoris never paid any attention to the hermits either but GHolland's mercs ate them (or did when they were very small).
 
I'm starting to worry, ocho doesn't want to eat. I've tried krill, shrimp, and squid. She will grab ahold of the krill and just toss it away. How often should they eat? I thought it was once a day to every other day. Any ideas?
 
Occassionally, Octane would touch food and push it away but would eat the next day. This became so normal we considered fasting him one day a week. We did not set a schedule to do this as planned but as he got older, he pretty much did it himself. Sometimes two days would pass before he would eat but no more. You can try one of the things that worked often on days we were concerned. Take a raw (try to get shell on or even full heads on as it appeared that something like lemon juice may have been added to the peeled we bought, effectively cooking the shrimp), peel it (be sure it is fully room temperature before serving and only use salt water if you are thawing it) and put about an inch and a half on a bamboo skewer. Try to place the shrimp as close as you can to the beak as it seemed that Octane's taste suckers were most sensative there. Since your fish only recently disappeared, I would recommend waiting 24 hours to try this.

We also made sure there was a live fiddler in the tank on days he would not eat (other times as well but always when he shoved his shrimp away). I never found a whole dead crab but then my clean up crew would have taken care of anything that died naturally.

As an asside, we found that changing an extra 5 gallons of water any time Octane acted in the least bit peculiar restored normal behavior (his tank was smaller than it should have been - always measure and check the gallonage of your tank - ours had a 10 gallon lower capacity than what we "bought" and did not realize it for 4 years). I am not sure what the extra water change accomplished since the ammonia and nitrite always showed 0 and the nitrate did not reduce with the additonal water change (oxygen level might have increased but there is plenty of CO2 exchange in the sump). For all I know it could have been the extra attention but it did seem to work and it certainly did not harm.
 
Shea;123962 said:
I have heard mixed suggestions about keeping octos with corals, anyone wanna share their opinion/experience?

Don't keep them with anything you value dearly. Most soft corals seem to do fine. Palythoa's are noticeably uncomfortable to an octopuses touch so I would avoid those. The majority of the corals I keep with mine are pretty much damage-proof and will just frag if they get torn up. Kenya tree, Anthelia, Xenia, star polyps, colt coral, sinularia all seem to do fine without any reactions from the octopus when they touch.

I would just avoid stingy LPS or anything that requires a lot of light. No brains, euphyllia's, or anything else that has tentacles.

Kalypso hasn't destroyed or moved any corals in his tank. Grover on the other hand decided that everything that could be moved would be moved.
 
Ocho is still refusing any kind of food and she wasn't out and about as much today. I think her breathing may have increased so I did a 10% water change although the readings were all good. Her breathing is at about 52 reps per minute. Isn't that a bit high? Please help I'm worried something is wrong.
 
Don't panic. Bringing a new octopus home is always stressful because there are so many "what if's"... even for the folks who have kept many octopuses over the years. The first few weeks are the worst.

Just provide the best possible environment you can. Keep offering food daily. You might leave the lights off just to eliminate that potential stress factor. We'll cross our fingers for ya.
 

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