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Hiding bimac

eirelav

Pygmy Octopus
Registered
Joined
May 15, 2003
Messages
12
Hi everyone,

I've now had a gorgeous little bimac, Andy, for about four months. She has been eating fine on frozen squid and the occassional clam or snail I throw in. My concern is that she seems to hide more now than she used to. She used to cling to the glass everyother day, which was her way of telling me she was hungry. Now she just hides in her cave and only seems to come out when I manually place the food next to her. Am I overfeeding her and she just knows she doesn't have to work for her food? I thought octopus were supposed to be voracious. She gets fed a piece of squid the size of her mantle every other day. The water parameters are near perfect, the NO3 or is it NO2, the second nitrogen in the cycle, is measurable at 0.3 ppm. Otherwise Ammonia is 0, pH is 8.0, S.G. is 1.025, phosphates are 0. Any suggestions?
 
Hi Eirelav,

It's not your water parameters, in my opinion. It's that bimacs have different personalities and maybe you have a shy one. My bimac Ollie took months to warm up and be friendly, but I sat by the tank every day and tried to play with her. Other bimacs are friendly from the start.

Maybe feed her half as much every day. Try to get her to play with the feeding stick (useful tool and toy). Many octopuses like tug of war. Some like toys and some don't - you need to try some new things.

Nancy
 
Andy does play with the feeding stick often, but from her den. She used to play tug of war from the glass, maybe she is just having a little depression. The toys I have in there are various shells, and plastic cat toys, there is also over 50 lbs of live rock in the 46 gallon tank for her to explore. I guess I was just worried because she used to roam the tank more. Maybe she has just seen it all and is bored. I'll try to think of more enrichment ideas.
 
have a look at a lot of carol and nancy's last posts about using lego bricks and other forms of enrichment
 
Hi Eirelav

Remember that bimacs have different personalities. I got all sorts of toys for Ollie, and she had no interest in any of them. When I read about Ink, I made a special trip to WalMart to buy big Lego blocks - but Ollie regarded them as an annoyance. I learned from trial and error that Ollie liked to play and interact with us, not toys, so I tried to find many ways to play with her, and it worked.

For instance, she would take the cleaning magnet, but not to play with, only to tease us! She was setting up a game where she dangled it out of her den, but when we tried to get it, she pulled it back and hid it.

So try lots of things and find out what Andy likes.

Nancy
 

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