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nikoli66

Cuttlefish
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Joined
Sep 30, 2005
Messages
22
I have several questions. I'm brand new to owning an octopus, it's a briareus and I've had it for around a month now. It seems to be doing great and has been eating frozen krill, live ghost shrimp, and emerald crabs. However, within the past four days has decided to not eat at all. I'm really getting concerned. Nothing seems to interest him. I've even tried throwing some other food items in there, but nothing yet.

Then the people at the pet store start asking me questions like, what's your salinity? What's the temp. of your water? What kind of lightning do you have? My point is, everything was fine. Why now?

However, my salinity was .22 and they told me it should be .20. Is that correct? That's my first question. Second, What should the actual temp. be? They said colder water. Well, my water is 74 right now, is that cold enough? How do you make the water colder if need be, but what is the temp suppose to be?
Third, I don't know about the lighting. I have two strips, one with a 100% actenic light, the other is white light, usually running them together, because I have a carpet anenome. However, they said to kill the white light and they may help. So, as of two days ago, the while one is not on.

I know this is a lot, I just don't want to be doing something wrong. Can someone help???

Thanks
Matt
 
Hi Matt and welcome to TONMO.com :welcome:

Lets start with salinity. I think you must mean that you have a specific gravity of 1.022. You need to slowly raise that to the level of natural seawater, 1.026. (Salinity is another measurement and has equivalent values of 34-35 ppt)

Briareus is a tropical octopus and does not need cold water. You need to slowly raise the tank tempertaure - try around 78 degrees.

What is your pH? Natural seawater has a pH of 8.2, you should be around that level. Nitrites and ammonia should be zero. Octos can tolerate low levels of nitrates.

What sort of lights do you have? You don't need metal halides - fluorescent will do. I would think the white light would be better than the actinic. What wattage do you have? And tank size?

Krill and emerald crabs are good food. Ghost shrimps are freshwater and don't have the nutrition that octos need. You might try good quality thawed frozen shrimp.

How large is your octo. It might be not eating because it is at the end of its life or getting ready to lay eggs.

Your LFS has not given you good advice!

Hope you can make these changes and maybe your octo will perk up.

Nancy
 
No sense in repeating good advice ! If you can give us some more information? Hate to say it, though, this is the time of year for a wild caught briareus to be heading out the door.
best,
greg
 
Thanks for the advice. I will work on getting it up to .26 (pardon my slang, it's quicker to type) and warm the water up, no problem. I have two fluorescent strips, one actinic and one white. The reason I have the actinic at all is because I have a carpet anenome in the tank also. I was told that anenomes needed this type of light or at least some of it or it would die. Each light is 25 watts.
My tank is only a 29 gallon, but the octo has been doing fine until a few days ago.

I've been feeding the krill and emeralds. The ghost shrimp was very little, but he did like them, but I won't feed those anymore.
 
Have you checked your ammonia? Gimpy was acting strange a few weeks ago and turns out the ammonia level had risen. I did a major waterchange to bring it back down. He also was off his feed. Is your octo hiding in his den? Could it be old enough to have eggs? Also is it hiding or just hanging out in the open?

And :welcome:

Carol
 
remember to increase it only by .01 per 24 hours or so...slowly wins the race on this one !!
Hope the little fellow rallies for you !
greg
 
He's still coming out in the evening cruising around like he's looking for something, but if he gets close to something, just ignores it. He hangs out in his den and out in the open, just wherever.
 
Have you checked your water parameters? Gimpy was acting strange but the ammonia had spiked. When is the last time you did a waterchange?
 
I want to thank everyone for their advice and just taking the time to help shed some light. However, I lost the little guy two days ago. I had checked the water and nothing was wrong there. He just stopped eating all together and kept to himself.
So, now I'm back to square one. I know I'm new to the site, however I just want to say that everyone is very friendly and helpful and I enjoy the conversation.

Thanks again
 

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