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Octopus had babies last night, need advice.

foltzcd

Hatchling
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Nov 17, 2009
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We created a 55 gallon tank one month ago specifically for an octopus. The first 2 weeks she was very active. The last two weeks she went into hiding in the rocks. This morning we had a swarm of several hundred babies in the tank (confirmed under a scope).

I need some advice on how to give them the best survival odds please. I am not even sure what they eat.

Help!
 
Not sure where you are located. If you have access to the ocean, then plankton would be your best bet. If not, you could try Cyclopeeze, or maybe mysid shrimp. Baby brine shrimp are not a good food to offer. Most cephalopods can eat food that is as large as their mantle. So if you can see the young octopus with the naked eye, you should also be able to see their food.
 
With out a lot more info on the octopus it is hard to suggest what to do next. There are basically two types of octopus young, palegic and benthic. The palegic (free swimming and living in the water column rather than roaming the substrate for the first part of their lives) are usually from very tiny eggs, hatch in mass in about 2 weeks and fit the information you have have given. Unfortunately, this means that the chances of keeping even one alive for more than a week is slim. Raising one to an adult has not been recorded in a home aquarium. If you will look at the top of this forum there is a subsection entitled Raising Octopus From Eggs. There are no success stories there but the posts may help with ideas and what to expect.
 
If you are near the ocean, setting them free in an appropriate habitat would be your best bet for their survival. :welcome: to TONMO, by the way!
 
ob;146139 said:
If you are near the ocean, setting them free in an appropriate habitat would be your best bet for their survival. :welcome: to TONMO, by the way!

Please do not release the eggs into the ocean! I know this may sound harsh to the eggs, but unless you are 100% sure that octopus is from the exact area where you live, you risk releasing an invasive species. Aquarium releases have had devastating impacts on natural habitats and native species (e.g. lion-fish in the Caribbean, turtles in the US- please do look up these situations). Octopuses are voracious predators and could really do some damage if introduced to a new place. Then again their home habitat may look very different from the ocean near you, so once they settle fish might eat them up in no time anyway, since they would not be quipped with the right camouflage tool kit. When one buys and imports an octopus, unless you are breeding large-egged species (and even this is very difficult), one has to accept the fact that this is at the cost of its offspring.
 
Intended by the word "appropriate" , as in "from whence it came", but I gladly will accept the folly of my post there. All of the above...
 

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