Istanbul Turkey Octopus care questions...

[theTurk]

Hi all ,

Im Efe from İstanbul/Turkey

My English is not that good sorry for that =)

Im feeding a tesselate eel in my house and now after i saw TONMO and all users forums and blogs. I recently planned to make a salt tank aquarium for an Octopus. another aquarium in my house.I have just ordered my tank from the Pet Shop that I know the guy till 10 year =) But there is something that I dont know. How many times do I have to feed the octopus in a week? and for crabs how can I feed the crabs with what? Im planing to have a little aquarium for the crabs.Also , is it right to feed the octopus with crab all the time?

Regards
Efe

 

[DWhatley]

Welcome Efe!
Crabs are a good food for an octopus and should be their main diet but changing food during the week seems to help. You can also feed shrimp (thawed from frozen is fine, fresh is always better), mussels and just the claws of larger crabs. If you feed live crabs, it is best to disable the claw. I usually do this by breaking off the smallest pincher.

Most crabs will eat pelletized fish food and will also take small amounts of any dead fish or shrimp but their tank will foul easily if any extra food is not removed quickly.

Octopuses do not all feed the same. I have one that will eat any time you offer food and will pace and squirt if she is not fed timely every day (we feed her 6 days a week and do not feed 1 day). Another I have only wants to eat 3 days a week (sometimes 4). Animals from cold water environments seem to feed less often than octopuses from warm waters.

 

[Joe-Ceph]

I find that it's easy to feed thawed pieces of frozen shrimp or scallop meat that I get from the market. Then I suppliment the diet with small live crabs when I can find them. Octopus really enjoy the thrill of capturing live food, so while frozen food might be a sufficient diet, an octopus can easily get "bored" (I suspect - but who really knows?) without the fun of hunting once in a while.