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- Sep 25, 2006
- Messages
- 572
I've learned a lot about what local animals make good clean up crew, and tank mates, in the past two years with my bimacs, and almost nothing is written about it, so maybe I can save you some time, and grief:jack-knife;163165 said:So what kind of things do you guys put in your tanks to clean up the mess the octos leave? The only thing that has not been eaten so far is the starfish.
Clean up crew:
Brittle stars are great, and super easy to find under rocks at low tide. The octopus ignores them.
Little snails are good at keeping the algae down, and while the octopus will probably eat them eventually, they are so small and hard to eat, that eating them will be your bimac's way of saying "you should feed me a little more often". A well fed bimac will leave little snails alone for many months.
Avoid chestnut cowries. When the octopus tries to eat it an amazing thing will happen, the cowrie, as a defense, will start producing huge amounts of thick slime. I had a one inch long cowrie convert about two quarts of tank water into slime so thick that it plugged 90% of my overflow and made a huge mess in my tank. I think a fully grown cowrie would have completely clogged my overflow, causing a flood, and a burned out return pump. No cowries!
Red Rock Shrimp can be found under rocks at low tide, and surprisingly, are good at not being eaten. Again, you'll get many months out of them.
I would avoid the more carnivorous sea stars, but a bat star is okay. A large one will need to be fed a lot, and will produce a lot of waste, but a small one is great at eating algae, detritus, and food particles.
After you get a larger tank, you can put an aggregating anemone on a rock in the corner. The worry is that the octopus will get stung, and could get their skin damaged, but I theorized that since the anemone in question lives naturally near the octopus in question, they've probably learned to cope. My bimac did pull back it's arm when it touched the anemone, but I never noticed any injury, and it just didn't seem like a big deal.