• 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.

Octopus vs Cuttlefish feeding

wii64brawl

Blue Ring
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Jun 7, 2011
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Not sure if this is the right place to post this or not. But...

What do both eat in terms of live food? I'm thinking either going with either an A. aculeatus in a 60g, or a pair of S. bandesis in a 40g. Im indifferent to which I prefer, it really comes down to feeding.

I'm in IL, so the only food I can get regularly (w/o buying online) are hermits and snails. I could setup a small tank for fiddler crabs or shore shrimp, but would rather not.

Are either more willing to accept dead food? I'm going to assume that hermits and snails would not sustain them, so just looking for ideas. Thanks.
 
Normally S. bandensis will be ordered as eggs that will hatch in the aquarium. For their first month, they will need live mysis shrimp but can then be weaned on to frozen foods. The mysis are the "gotcha" as they don't survive long and most people have to order them on-line each week at considerable expense. I have a large tank that I would love to keep cuttles in but the first month care and expense has kept me from trying. I don't believe they will ever eat hermits and snails. Once on frozen foods the expense and difficulty in feeding is greatly reduced but there are no good substitutes for the first month or so after hatching. Finding cuttles already eating frozen is rare and when available they are often at the end of their lives.

Hermits and snails are not the best for any ceph. However, your local seafood (especially any Asian markets you may have near by) will offer foods that are appropriate. Frozen shrimp, clams and crab claws (scavenged from LIVE crab bins, not from frozen offerings), in addition to some live offerings, are all quality foods for an octopus. They will also often eat mussels and oysters on the half shell but these are a pollution issue with the tank and I avoid them.
 
Each animal varies but as far as expense goes if you feed primarily frozen (I meant to mention that you can freeze crab claws but can't buy the raw frozen - you cannot find raw frozen crab meat and you cannot safely freeze larger whole crabs) and only supplement with live the cost is minimal (relatively speaking). An octo as small as an aculeatus will eat roughly one small shrimp a day but you do need to vary the diet and offer live food on occasion, once or twice a week is recommended.

Also keep in mind that the lifespan is not a lot longer than a dwarf octo AND that the age at capture is unknown. Aculeatus are typically with us only a few months, 7 or 8 is close to the top of the expectancy, 3-5 more common.
 
i have had 2 a.aculeatus for a little over 5 months and so far i have gone threw about 175 fidler crabs(including10-20 die offs) total cost of about $150 for 2 orders of 75 and 100 crabs, this is by far the cheepest way to buy them as long as you have a place to keep them,100 fidlers will live fine in a 30 breeder tank or somthing with a simalar footprint with about an inch of water and some rock rubble and a few pounds of sand from my reef tank just for a little biological filtration, whenever i change the water i swap out the rock rubble and sand for different ones from my tanks this gives the crabs some fresh algie to pick off the rocks and sand but i also feed marine flakes and ocational cyclopeez or fresh hatched babby brine shrimp just to boost the nutritional content of the crabs
the only time i have die offs of the crabs is when i let the water quality get bad, once it starts to smell it should be changed or they start to die quickly over feeding the flakes is the main cause of this.
i have also gone threw about $50-75 worth of gohst and shore shrimp from local stores that i just devide between the tanks and let the octos hunt them as desired ocationaly catching one and feeding it to an octo from tongs
keep in mind i'm feeding 2 octos so these numbers should last alot longer but it's not cost efective to buy in smaller numbers becouse the shipping is the real expence
my younger aculeatus spider (7-9 months estimated age)will eat at least 1 fidler a day 2 once i get down to the small ones pluss random shrimp
the older one cleatus (10-11 months) only eats 1 fidler every few days at this point thought he seems to prefer shrimp and nasarius snails wich i kepp a suply of in bolth tanks. i belive cleatuses lack of apitite is due to his old age and i fear i my loose him soon
 
cleatus lives in a 72 bowfront and spider is in a 65.
i live about 7 hrs from N.Y. aquira so i made the drive to pic them out in person on the day the owner told me he had 4 new octos coming in so i had 5 to pic from.
as far as i could tell all 5 of them wer a. aculeatus of different sizes and he told me he only uses one indoneasan suplyer so if you order from him theirs a good chance you will get an aculeatus but i have heard of peapole geting nocturnal dwarfs from him before.
spider was the smallest one he had being only about 3-4inches full armspan the others wer larger 10-12 inch span.
i don't know if it's becouse i got him so young and gave him good feedings from such a small size or what but spider has goten much larger than cleatus did, his mantle is bigger and his arms are much thicker than cleatus ever was, i almost feel like cleatus is shrinking in his old age or it might just be my prospective becouse spider has goten so much biger.
 
Well after some looking around, I saw on a website that I have ordered from before that they were selling what they claim to O. briareus.
http://finaddictsaltwaterfish.com/index.php?l=product_list&c=27

They call it a Caribbean Reef Octopus. Though it is advertised as a briareus, what other species could I possibly be getting? I know there are mercatoris, hummelincki, and vulgaris. I'm not so worried about the others as I am about a vulgaris... How easy would it be to ID a vulgaris from the rest?

Would a 60 gallon suffice for all except vulgaris?

I was going to go with cuddles, but honestly, the first month for them is really out of the budget.
 
Interesting products. The pricing is really high for a dwarf when the mercs were common but the O. briareus pricing is fair for the current market depending upon their shipping. Vulgaris is not likely but we do see them occasionally. They really don't look like O. briareus (assuming juvenile or older, hatchlings are much harder to guess). The photo of the Common Caribbean Reef octo is accurate for the species. The dwarf picture is a bit more puzzling and looks like a very young vulgaris. It is not an O. mercatoris.

For a quick look reference when you know the source and suspect a one of the common species is to examine the siphon and sucker outer ring color. When displaying color the vulgaris siphon and rings at the of the sucker rims will be orange(sometimes quite bright orange). O. briareus and O. mercatoris will have a white siphon and white sucker tips and O. hummelincki may have an orange siphon but will have deep blue/purple rings at the suckers. Unfortunately, these colors do not always show and both sucker tips and siphon can display white in all species we generally see. It is only when colors are displayed that you can use them to help with an ID.
 

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