• Looking to buy a cephalopod? Check out Tomh's Cephs Forum, and this post in particular shares important info about our policies as it relates to responsible ceph-keeping.

Is a River Reef 94 litre to small before I start researching about Octopus?

simonas

Hatchling
Registered
Joined
Feb 27, 2011
Messages
2
As the title says really

I;ve always loved octopus and have found a local store that gets what they only descibe as common octopus in on a semi regular basis

First question I suppose is a basic one but I run a river reef 94 litre reef. If I could keep an octopus in that tank I would sell the corals and fish/shrimp etcand set it up with an octopus after much research on here of course

is it a runner in that tank and what common species shouldI be looking for if thats the case

Many thanks

Simon
 
First and formost, a big hearty :welcome: to our little corner of the web!

Secondly, your current set-up is roughly half the recommended minimal size of 208 liters, excluding any of the normal sized Octopus species. A dwarf species *might* be feasible, but will offer little with regards to interaction, as they are mainly nocturnal predators. Even if you'd switch their day/night cycle, you'd still find yourself in need of owl's eyes to make out anything of their behaviour. So, the simple answer is, a larger tank is required, well cycled, of course. On top of that, browsing through our articles here online will teach you about the clean-up requirements and challenges that Octopus pose. Sump and filtering (and possibly refugium) are necessarily of over the top proportions for cephalopods compared to normal reef keeping. They are messy, big time, and this does not apply to Mesonychoteuthis solely :wink:
 
The other concern is the use of the words common octopus. In most of the world that would apply to O. vulgaris and a tank three times the size OB mentions would be recommended (that may even be small for the Mediterranean species that appears to be larger than our Atlantic version). If your LSF can find out where the octos are coming from, it will give a better idea of how much larger you would need to go to make a feasible home.

There are numerous dwarf species that a 20 gallon tank could house but here, we generally only see a fairly reclusive nocturnal (O.mercatoris) and the blue ring dwarf is not recommended. There may be other dwarfs offered/local to the UK that we don't see in the states but no one has reported one. However, I currently am keeping a diurnal dwarf in a 37 gallon tank and think this species could be housed in something smaller. The problem is, I have no clue what species he is or if I will ever see another (this one is from the Caribbean).
 
Thanks for the welcomes and the advice chaps

That answers my question straight away. However looking through this site I now know for sure after 20 yrs of fishkeeping that these amazing animals can be kept and one day I will once I move in to my bigger house with fish room just for me

I;ll just keep looking and learning on here

thanks Simon
 

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