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Octopus not eating, odd behavior and waste?

If your water chemistry is OK, I shouldn't get too worried. Stringy poo's are fairly common as are periods of not eating. In fact our Long John Slither has gone to ground under the shells in his tank and won't come out for anything.........not even nice juicy crabs. Cap'n Black Beak is off his food too. Just leave some live food in the tank and he may sort it out for himself. If it's parasites there's little you can do.

The white spots do look like scar tissue so he may have received a nip but he'll get over it!

As for crab size..........that one in the vid is fine! Octopus (and squid) can deal with surprisingly large prey! I've seen one of our midgets (15 cm total length) tank on (and beat!) a crab of 15 cm carapace width!

Cheers

J
 
...which is why I mentioned that I think he might have gotten a bad pinch from a crab at some point in the past and is now a little sheepish toward them.
 
Maybe the crabs he was used to were slower and behaved differently, so he was unprepared for the quick little fiddler.

Maybe give him a few smaller ones (females, with smaller claws) and let him build up his confidence.

Nancy
 
Dan,

I will throw in my .5 penny (I'm not experienced enough for 2 cents worth yet). I have had Trapper for almost 3 weeks. There are hermits, mithrax, fiddlers, grass shrimp, guppies and maybe some snails (hermits may have already consumed the lot) and what ever my liverock had naturally. I have seen exactly one mithrax crab that I feel comfortable in saying was eaten. I had asked my collector to ask the crab trapper who saved him for me what bait is used in the crab traps since Trapper is too small to be eating stone crabs but Ken forgot to ask. After trying raw shrimp on a stick (he may have eaten some but I only see small parts of him at a time) several times, I hit the internet to see what bait is common and found that only one bait is used for stone crab, fish heads. My son feeds live goldfish to his Lion and one died in the tank today so I stuck it on a stick (yuck!) and left for the afternoon. The entire fish is gone and the feeding stick was pulled into a hole.

This whole saga is to suggest that you try something similar to see if it will stimulate Sleipner's appetite with something that is, uh, bloody and yucky and SMELLY. Neal (spouse) is convinced that sharks are not the only thing that "smell" blood. After seeing the whole tank come alive and start heading for the the freshly dead, skewered fish (too large for the clean-up crew to have eaten completely in the time frame), I am starting to think smell is important. Even my frozen shrimp may be too clean. Hopefully, my son will have another dead fish to try tomorrow (sometimes his wrasse will attack and kill but not eat and I just couldn't skewer an alive one). If the fish on a stick start bringing him out, I will try fresh shrimp from the market vs the frozen kind to see if that helps.

Sorry for the always verbose explainations but I feel my novice status needs explaining.
 

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