Day 3 Success with Shrimp!
Excellent! IME, they won't take more than one properly sized food item in roughly a 4 hour period. Guessing on the actual length of time as most are fed once a day at roughly the size of your little guy. If it will take two feedings, and you can arrange your schedule to offer it, go ahead and try or put a live fiddler in the tank before you go to bed (now that she is eating, she may eat the mithrax if she is hungry since they are local to the Keys but she will have to find them by feel and they don't make a lot of vibration on the rock). We have not seen any issues with overeating but have seen occasional kills without eating if there is too much live food in the tank (the mithrax are fine to leave in there as are snails which may be eaten on occassion but rarely).
They do seem to want to commandeer the feeder stick. I have no idea why but it is classic octopus behavior even very early on. Cassy insisted on dragging the pipette down into the LR last night after both feedings. She took the shrimp out first but then insisted on keeping the delivery tube.
It appears that food sizing has a lot to do with what they will accept. Tomorrow, feed the same sized shrimp at about the same time if you can. Generally speaking about 1/2 - 3/4 of the mantle length seems about right for table shrimp. I am feeding shore shrimp that are about 3/4 mantle length but far thinner twice a day to all three of my tiny ones and they may hunt a little in between but after the exponential growth phase, once a day seems to work fine. They seem to have to digest the food and eliminate the last meal before they can eat again. With the adults, we almost always saw them eliminate when we started feeding the tank and they would not come for the shrimp until this task was completed. It got to be rather humerous and Neal would feed the Cyclop-eeze and small mysis to the corals and clean up crew and then wait for the "sign" before offering shrimp or a crab. They don't have much, if any, internal storage. Once you have a routine, you can try larger pieces until you see that part of the food is uneaten (and be sure to get it out of the tank! Shrimp is a major ammonia source and it happens quickly). At full adult, we fast one day a week, others will feed every other or even every two days depending upon the octopus. You will see a drop in appetite eventually once the growth rate slows way down.
It's interesting how much personality difference there is, not just between species but among individuals.
This is still a "debate" with the scientists but never has been with hobbiests
Been meanin' to ask
, when are you going to be convinced you need to start a keeper's journal?