• 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.

pygmy octopi and other questions

jocelyna

Hatchling
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Joined
Feb 6, 2005
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Hi everyone, my name is Jocelyn and I'm new here. I want to get my boyfriend a pygmy octopus for Valentine's Day. I have a few questions...

Does anyone here own one? How easy are they to take care of? How big do they grow to be? How high maintenance are they?

Thank you so much!

My AIM is Bliss9842.

Jocelyn :smile:
 
Hi jocelyna and welcome to TONMO.com :welcome:

Your boyfriend would have to set up a salt water aquarium and let it "cycle", a process that would take up to three months before it could be a home for an octopus. Unless he has other salt water tanks so that he could spare one for the dwarf octo, he'll have to wait a while before getting his gift.

Another problem is the reliability of identification of species. The local fish stores are notoriously bad this - some have bought dwarves, only to have them turn out to be much larger octopuses.

Have a look at the articles under Ceph Care (click on the Ceph Care button above), especially the Equipment List and the Checklist.

You'll need food such as small crabs and shrimp to feed the little octo. It needs some live food. They are not low maintenance, but no salt water set up really is.

Nancy
 
Maybe that's a little bit of an exaggeration. After all, the estimate is about $1000/year to keep a dog. If you don't live near the ocean, importing some live food is going to be expensive. Frozen shrimp isn't the cheapest food, either. And of course, you want to give your octo pet a variety of good quality food, with some live food (usually crabs or shrimp) included.

As for time, that's not so bad unless you count the time watching your octopus and playing with it. I figured about an hour a week on maintenance, but much more time watchng and interacting, including playing with her.

Nancy
 
Wow, thank you so much for the valuable information. We live on campus in the dorms at our college as well, so maybe it's not the best idea to invest in such a pet at this point.
 
Hm..I wise choice. You should really make sure if you have the time and money to spend on pets before buying them. Not only for octos, but for all the other pets. And if you bought a pet and decided to go on vacation, who's gonna take care of the poor animal?
Just a few questions to ask yourself before buying a pet.
 

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