Ceph enthusiast from Midlothian IL.

blatta70

Hatchling
Registered
Joined
Dec 14, 2015
Messages
4
Location
Illinois
Hello, my name is Mark. Its great to finally be among such a large family of cephalopod enthusiasts. I've been monitoring the forum for some time but until now never found much need to become a member. My first captive octopus was an O. bimaculatus that I had acquired nearly 27 years ago when I was a senior in high school. After about 4 months, she ended up laying eggs but being a small-egg species, the paralarvae never had much of a chance. I of course attempted to feed them Artemia nauplii enriched with Chlorella in hopes of rearing at least one to the "crawling stage." The paralarvae fed heavily but alas, none of them survived much past two weeks most likely due to nutritional deficiencies. Nevertheless, it was a highly rewarding experience. At the time I was an employee at the local pet store in Westmont, IL and eventually managed it while I attended college until its closing in 1999, during which I had numerous opportunities to work with several other Octopus species. Afterwards, I continued to maintain a few mini-reef aquariums but found octopods to be somewhat unavailable so I more or less gave up the search. Now that I'm a father to my 5 year old son who himself is equally enthralled with cephalopods, I am eager to rear octopods once again, preferably large-egg species such as O. bimaculoides or O. mercatoris and other captive-bred cephs if possible.

Mark
 
:cuttlehi:@blatta70 ! There are still not many (none to be realistic) captive bred octos to acquire but we have had a very few successes with raising offspring of wild caught animals (and an additional generation of O. mercatoris). Octos are still hard to come by but the spring tends to be a good time to look. Here is a sticky with a list of posts I recommend for new/returning octo keepers. The, "Box of Chocolates" link gives a summary of the most commonly kept animals. If you are setting up a new environment and have the room, I would recommend starting with a tank that is 55 gallons or more with an external sump. This will allow you to keep the largest number of species.

An alternate would be to consider keeping cuttlefish. They are expensive to raise for the first month or so but readily mate in an aquarium. If you build out an octopus tank, you can try cuttles using the same tank. Since the lifespan is so short, this is a nice flexibility over an extended period.
 
Thank you for the great advice! I've always wanted to try keeping cuttlefish and Sepiolids too but never found them to be available. Now I know where to start looking when I'm ready. I did manage to keep a male Brief Squid (L. brevis) for a few months well over a decade ago. For those who think octopods have a bottomless pit for a stomach, these squid seem to be even more so. Feeding became a lot easier once I weaned it to frozen shrimp and fish. Beautiful animal, though.
 

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