Beans is here!!!!!!

You can put a sea cucumber in your tank or you can see how your octo feels about having snails. He may not eat them, but that is up to you because it could just be a dinner.
 
You can reduce your lighting period to slow it down (if you are on a 12/12 cycle change it to an 8/16). Water changes which include stirring your sand (your tank should look cloudy after a wate change and so should the water you pull off), cleaning the rock off outside the tank and time are my best advice. If you can remove a badly covered rock and immediately put it in a bucket of saltwater (easy to obtain if you use the water you pull off your tank during a water change), scrub it with a soft - not used for anything else - brush and immediately return the rock to the tank, you will avoid putting the loose algae into the tank to grow elsewhere. Snails, hemit crabs and mithrax crabs help but, particularly the mithrax, will likely become dinner (I would add either the snails or hermits anyway though - not both or you will just have hermits living in snail shells). Urchins help a lot but are not suitable for an octo tank (I will put urchins in an empty tank to reduce the coraline algae between octopuses). If you can remove a badly covered rock and immediately put it in a bucket of saltwater (easy to obtain if you use the water you pull off your tank during a water change) and scrub it with a soft - not used for anything else - brush, you will avoid putting it back into the tank to grow elsewhere.

Don't use chemicals and don't expect overnight results. Maybe I will change my tag line to "nothing good ever happens quickly in a saltwater environment" so I don't have to repeat it so often. :wink:
 
I have had my 55 gal set up for 10 yrs now and there are some times during the year when I get a bad algae bloom. As stated above, just brushing the algae off of the rock works best. I have a baby brush, a nail brush and tooth brushes I bought just for this purpose so the girls can't use them to scrub the bearded dragon. I think of it as weeding, part of a healthy garden that needs to be tended to look nice. After you get control of it, you'll only have to "weed" out the algae bit by bit. Also as D suggested, back off on the lighting. When I switched to octos I took the metal halides off and went back to the original lights as octos don't need strong lighting and that helped a lot.
 
So i cleaned up the tank with the tooth brush looks good.

I got a question about the zoos i got. Will they attach to the rock i have them on? I keep finding them on the rock below. I have had them now for about a week and a half. I am worried something is wrong.
 
Ok I think beans dropped an arm on me. I have a video of her when she was only on her 3rd day. Now its been a week exactly and she is missing her 2nd right arm. If it is in the tank some where should i try and find it and remove it? Also how long will it take for her to grow it back?

Here is a pic of the missing arm.
 

Attachments

  • conv_294474.jpg
    conv_294474.jpg
    2.4 MB · Views: 88
If you can find the arm, yes, remove it but don't tear up the tank looking. However, I don't recall anyone ever finding a truncated arm in the tank. Do you have ANY impellers (in-takes for a power head for example) that Beans might have investigated and then detached the arm because it got caught? The only spinning things I keep in the tanks any more are the Koralias, which were successfully designed to avoid sucking in most live things. They made me nerveous around OhToo for months but, inspite of his poking, he never damaged himself and this had held true through several others of mine and everyone else who has reported using them.

If your zoos keep getting moved, I would suggest relocating them. It takes quite awhile for them to attach (some people glue them or put a netting over them for three or four weeks) so if they are being blown around, they never will.

I have not kept an abdopus for more than a couple of weeks (he was known to be senescent when he arrived) so I can't give you direct observation on this species. In the spirit of trying to help you not get frustrated, I will tell you that we tried to watch the regrowth rate with SueNami and have guestimated it at about an inch a month. I am sure, however, that the hummelincki regrowth rate was slower but we did not make an attempt to record any observations.
 
Ya all i have in the tank for impellers is a koralia and i have the guard on it. I am almost sure she dropped because if you look at the video you can see the arm. Also if she does happen to lay eggs any time what should i do. This is my first female octo.:lol:
 
The only thing you CAN do when she broods it attempt to feed her. Aculeatus are a small egg species and you are welcomed to attempt to raise them but 11 days is our record so far. Sedna has a good journal on her attempt and when Beans starts brooding (she will) she will pick a den and not come out. Brood time for this species seems to be about 10 days and almost immediate death after the hatching but we need more logs to have better timing on both.
 
So this morning i went to turn on the tank lights and saw beans out on the glass. She was completely white. She was up in the top left hand corner almost out of the water. I tapped on the glass and she opened an eye. She slid down the glass staying completely white and also having all her arms curled up very close to her. I know the curled arm thing is bad. Has anyone seen there octo fall a sleep on the glass? Also could this mean she is about to brood?
 
sleeping in the open on the glass has been observed a few times and no strong conclusions have been made. Carol's Oscar had a preference for sleeping in the open but in over 20 octopuses, this was the first to choose the open glass. SueNami sleeps against the glass but not in the open and there are a couple of others reporting similar activity.

I think you are referring to the corkscrew arm position that octopuses seem to show when badly stressed. That look is usually with arms very twisted. If you can get a photograph, it might clarify the posturing but she may have found food or may sleep with arms withdrawn. Is she still showing white coloration? I don't belive that is normal for aculeatus in the day but may be at night.
 
Grendel slept on the glass in the open from time to time, but she did so in her normal brown/black coloration. I thought it was strange because while she was awake she wouldnt leave the rocks.
 
Well i havent seen her again today.:hmm: She stayed white the whole time until she tucked away into her den. I read the book that nancy and colin wrote. It says the curled up arms are a sign that the octo is coming to it end. I will try and get a pic if she does it again.
 
So she is back to normal. Also she fell asleep on the glass the other night also.

I still have my algae problem. The rocks look better but the sand seems to be growing this long grey hair algae. I sweep it away every day and is is back by the next morning. Got any tips on how to help get rid of this stuff?
 
Beans is doing great is out all day until i turn the lights off. She is letting starting to grab my finger. But today i was reading a room away. I started hearing air pumping into my tank. Beans had started squirting water out of the over flow!:roflmao: i have a uni-aquarium.

My algae on my rocks in under control, but i have this really bad grey hair like algae in my sand bed. I mix up the sand like every day. It comes back with in a day. I am thinking that is might be because i got brighter lights. I cut my hours with the lighting but it seems to always still seems to come back. What should i do about this?
 
Well I am glad to hear that you and bean are getting along well. As far as the algae goes I have a sea cucumber in my tank which pretty much eats algae covered sand and poops out clean sand. :wink: I am pretty sure that sea cucumbers are one of the few things octo's can be kept with, I'm not sure if anyone sees a reason not to keep one with an octopus but so far I haven't had any mishaps.
 

Shop Amazon

Shop Amazon
Shop Amazon; support TONMO!
Shop Amazon
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon and affiliated sites.
Back
Top