- Joined
- Jun 27, 2007
- Messages
- 21
Ummm...Hi I guess. My name is Dan. I've got 2 10 gallon aquariums, both saltwater and both had mantis shrimp until recently. They both died, probably from a bad molt. I'm looking into my water for heavy metals (I think it was cause by my salt, which I recently switched. Any ceph keepers here use coralife salt?) I guess my facination with cephs started when I was really young, then some time later (somewhere between 10-14) I looked into them as pets. I did alot of research (No research actually. I only remember reading anecdotal stories about someones neat octopuss behavior while thinking " man I can't wait to setup a ten gallon for one!" HA!) Anyways I am now back onto the ceph track with about 4-5 months of SW experience under my belt and a great deal of reading. I was trying to figure out what to do with my spare 30 gallon, acrylic. My first thought was o. scyllarus (peacock) mantis shrimp. I ended up deciding against it in favor of dividing it up to keep 3 mantis shrimp. Decided against that in favor of keeping a mantis in a reef tank, decided against that in favor of a seahorse tank, and finally decided against that because my tank was 2 inches too short. This all took the span of 2 weeks. Then it hit me! I wanted an octopuss. I did all that research a few years ago...what size tank did they need (pause, long drawn out "aahhh", drooling) Dang! Okay I'll go look it up. Got sidetracked, read about various octos, decided I wanted O. briareus, got back on track, minimum 50 gallon for any good octo, 10 for dwarf octos like O. mercatoris, but they are boring. Dr. Roy said that O. briareus could live in a 30 gallon if water quality can be kept up, but I wouldn't want to have to stretch a system and overstock it like that with such a sensitive animal. Then I remember a few months ago I looked into S. bandensis cuttlefish, and how they can be kept in 20 gallon highs! Fastforward a week and here I am, joining Tonmo.com and planning to setup an S. bandensis tank somewhere around midsummer and hoping to get some S. bandensis eggs somewhere around october, which is when I hear they usually come in. Awesome, huh? Okay, I'm done now
Dan
Dan