• 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.

More than 1 octupus in a 180

jjj1100

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Apr 7, 2008
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Hello all,

I have a 180 I was going to do a FOWLR with, but was thinking of turning it into an octupus tank if I could do 2 or 3 in a tank that size. Obviously I wouldn't have any fish or other inhabitants, but wasn't sure if a tank that size could comforatbaly house 2 or 3.

Thanks in advance
Jeff
 
I am very new with cephs, but I know that they will most likely kill each other in a short period of time, you could do this with cuttles though I believe...
 
:welcome: Jeff

we generally don't recommend keeping more than one octopus in a tank, except occasionally when raising siblings. For the most part, octos aren't social animals, so although they sometimes tolerate each other, they also sometimes fight or seem to stress each other out quite a bit. It definitely falls in the "risky" category. If you're interested in having several cephs that interact with each other, you might want to consider cuttlefish as an alternative.
 
thank you for the quick repsonses...this might be the dumbest question I ask, but what is the difference between a cuttlefish and an octopus. I don't want to buy something and not be able to take care of it properly.

What cuttlefish would you recomend for a 180, how many, what type...etc.
Thanks again.
 
I guess I forgot to mention that the ARTICLES tab at the top of the page is a good place for basics, so I'll sneak that in.

Cuttlefish differ from octopuses in a number of ways... cuttles are more closely related to squids, and share a lot in common with them: they have two long feeding tentacles in addition to their 8 arms, they tend to swim freely in the water rather than hiding in rocks and caves like octos do, and they're rather more social with each other. They have rigid cuttlebones, so they don't change their shape as much as octos do, but they tend to have even more impressive displays than octos. They seem to show "personality" like octos do, but they "express themselves" a bit differently... they seem to prefer visual displays to touching, feeling, and manipulating as octos do. Like octos, they mostly eat saltwater crustaceans.

The only cuttles we've seen reliably recently are Sepia bandensis which stay fairly small. Several people on TONMO have tank-raised bandensis at the moment, see the "Cuttlefish Availability" thread for details.

It used to occasionally be possible to get the larger Sepia officinalis and Sepia pharonis, which require a much larger tank, but your 180 could house a small number of them. We haven't seen them in the pet trade much for the past few years, though.
 
monty, thanks for all of you help. I actually found the articles tab since I posted that and have been reading it. I think the Sepia bandensis is the way to go. Do they do better in specfic numbers? ie. maybe 4 or 5 in a 180.

Also I have my tank drilled with return arms (lock line) that come up from the bottom, the return hole for flow is about 1/2 inch wide lockline, could the cuttle crawl in there, or should I get a mesh gratting of some kind to cover that up.
Thank you again
 
Hi, welcome to TONMO.com

Yeah you should cover all outlets from the tank and returns if it was for octopuses but a cuttlefish shouldn't be able to crawl in against the flow of a return... better safe than sorry though and if you have any doubts - cover it up :smile:
 
You could probably keep quite a few bandensis in a 180 like 5-10, but 5 would probably be the most you want to keep just for price of feeding. With such a big tank, I would try and look for a couple officinalis or pharonis, no one on tonmo currently has any, so it would be nice for some variation, to see if there are different attitudes and stuff.
 

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