Feeding my octopus

maroun.c

maroun.c

New member
Hi i'm having problems feeding the hitchhicker octopus i got. i see it may be once every 3-4 days only at night so i attach a piece of raw shrimp to a feeding stick and place it next to it so it just grabs it and takes it to it's hiding place however the next day i find some leftovers so i wander if it's eating anything. also if i put food on the feeding stick and put it in the tank it won't come out even at night to take it.
i went to the lfs to ask for crawdads or some small shrimps or a small hermit, they never heard of crawdad and they ony have some freshwater blue lobsters and their size is a bit bigger than my octopus, do you think they will die when put in saltwater and the octopus will eat them? also should i remove their pinchers? they told me they can get me freshwater ghost shrimps do you think the octopus will eat them? also should i acclimate them to saltwater or just dumb them close to him?
also the smallest hermit at the lfs is double the size of my octopus whinch is around 1.5 inches with extended limbs so do you think he will be able to kill the hermit? i found at the grocery store some crabs for sale but they are too big so i'll be trying feeding him pieces of them and. my last resort is to head for the sea and get some of those small crabs that wander on the rocks and then just dumb them in his tank and hope he'll find and consume them. any suggestions?
here's a photo of those freshwater blue lobsters and i'll post a pic of my octopus as soon as i mange to get a decent one
 
in my opinion i think your best bet would be to find some micro hermits. i have a small bimac that i give a couple of hermits to every few days, and when she's good and comes out and plays a fiddler crab. i am currently trying to get her moved over to frozen food, which she doesn't really like. also there would be leftovers in the tank, octos are notoriously messy eaters. i reccomend a good skimmer and carbon.
 
octo feeding

octo feeding

my 3 baby (about 4 months old) CB bimacs love the crawfish, but i've also started feeding them large (about 3/4") pieces of freeze dried krill with a feeding stick (rigid piece of clear tubing with cuts at the bottom to hold the shrimp)...obviously that causes less mess in the tank, but i think they also need to hunt and kill the live food...those lobsters would probably work fine, but might get expensive (crawfish are about 50 cents apiece) - i would suggest removing the pinchers so they don't hurt your octos...good luck!
 
Hi,

When I feed my larger octopuses crawdads, I do remove the pinchers most of the time, just to be on the safe side. For my small captive bred bimac, which is the size of your "hitch hiker", I fed it freshwater ghost shrimp that only cost 0.08 cents a piece. I never acclimated the freshwater ghost shrimp to the salt water. I simply threw them in and the baby bimac chased, caught , and ate them within about 10 to 30 seconds. I have also been successfully feeding my larger bimacs goldfish, which they chase down and eat as well. I also do not acclimate them to the salt water. Nor do I acclimate the crawdads, which is their prefered food source in my aquariums. I have fed my larger octopuses raw and cooked shrimp occassionally, and I even fed one a chunk of imitation crab meat tonight as an experiment.

So, with all that said, I would try feeding your octopus ghost shrimp becasue they are so inexpensive. Otherwise, I would take a trip to the beach and collect some of the local crabs that frequent the area as suggested.

Good luck,

Dr. Idso
 
Thanks for all the help i'll be geting some of those lobsters only cause they are available at the lfs now. then on the week end i'll be crab hunting at the beach and hopefully the lfs willget some ghost shrimps for me soon (or is that for my lobster).
nice octo Dr idso i managed to get a few pic of my octopus however all were taken in a rush for on the first motion, flash or light in the room my octo is getting startled and swims across the tnak sometimes hitting the rocks to hide between them.the good thing though is that he is taking frozen shrimp pieces from the feeding stick and most probably eating parts of them which i believe is good. i'll be taking some of the rocks in the tank out to be able to see him when the liughts are on. here are the pics and hopefully someone will be able to id him
 
last one for now. i'll be trying to get better pics but this is too hard as my octo is still very shy i never saw it out of it's hiding place except under complete darkness
 
the octo looks like a dwarf like Octopus cf bocki or something similar... these octos are extremely nocturnal like you have found out and seem to prey mostly on amphipods, and not really anything much bigger.... in a set up reef tank there should be plently food for it.
 
thanks for your reply, i sould rather not have him consume my pods population and as he is so nocturnal and hard to locate do you think the risk is reasonable to take to have something in the display that you would never see? (i barely see him in the 10 G tank)
is there any substitute for pods that he would take?
as i said he is grabing pieces pf shrimp and rushing with the food to his hiding place but i usually find leftovers so could he be not eating?
also i'm considering getting another bigger one that would show up under daylight so you think it's safe to have the two in the same tank?
thanks for the help.
 
Hi Steve,

Sorry about the 0.08 a piece ghost shrimp line, as my calculations were off. At one of my local fish stores, I actually buy their ghost shrimp at their bulk special price of $7.50 for 50 of them. That actually amounts to 0.15 each, not 0.08. Sorry for the mistake, but to me, the 0.15 is still a great deal and a much better one than 0.50 to 0.75 for a crawdad. (That's why I now net my own crawdads).

Regards,

Dr. Idso
 
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