nursery ideas

[KMAN]

I work at an aquarium with some friends and we have an octopus with eggs. we think they are going to be benthic so does anybody have any ideas on a nursery tank...

 

[Nancy]

I assume you have a tank with perhaps a sump, but it's not flow-through like the aquarium where you work (or will this take place at the aquarium?) The gestation period may be 4 to 6 weeks. The eggs will hatch over a period of a couple of days. Feeding will be your main problem. You can put the hatchlings in individual containers, but that hasn't worked too well. So you might put them together in a tank. Feeding will be your main problem. Determine what you will feed them (mysid shrimp), and then you need to add fresh food several times a day. You may need to start with the smallest mysid shrimp and work up in size. So you see how complicated this is - please talk to someone at an aquarium who is breeding octopuses, or perhaps you could talk to Octopets.

Good luck!

Nancy