OCTOPUS: COMMON CAUSE OF DEATH

[brett]

from your experience what is the most common cause of death in most home tanks? (not including old age)...
thanks

 

[Nancy]

I've been keeping track of this with bimacs for a couple of years now. There's no one overriding cause. Some early deaths last year were vaguely due to human error (escape where the tank wasn't properly sealed, family member turning up the temperature on the heater, power stayed off during a weeks absence, etc.)

But this year we couldn't determine why some of them died. Reason unknown. There were several that survived a few months and then passed away.

I will continue to track this and hope that we gain some additional knowledge.

Nancy

 

[Colin]

owners mistakes is probably the commonist, but closely followed by shipping stress for some species

 

[brett]

yeah, thank you. I figured someone more experienced than I on here would have been keeping trakcof this and they were. I am almost completely ready to go on my octo tank which with research and all is almost a year and a half in the making. So I am real edgy right now about actually getting the octo. I want to make his first two or so months as good as possible and am trying to gain common mistake info. thank you for the help and any other knowledge that would help me in this reguard that isn't regular octo care would be greatly aprecciated. thanks again,
Brett

 

[cthulhu77]

My last octo (a pygmy digueti) only died when subjected to having crawled (still never did find out how...clever little bugger) out of his tank, across a 40 foot expanse of carpet, underneath the front door (tight squeeze, too) and almost all the way out the driveway to the street...he was quite old for a pygmy (almost a year) and full of beans...you have to admire his spunk, but it sure was depressing...

 

[Andy Lister]

Not mixing your octo and checking it's pH and temp when it arives and just popping it into the tank.

If they die for no apparent reason i'm sure you could send them off to a lab for histology to discover... IDEXX are the one we use in the UK

~Andy

 

[Nancy]

Hmmm, Andy, what is "mixing your octo"?

Nancy

 

[cthulhu77]

Well, you have to use the "pulse" setting on the blender...if you try to make an octo frappe too quickly, the taste comes out just a little to fishy for me...but I am picky in that sense.

 

[Andy Lister]

ooops, sorry for forgetting that not everyone is as insane as me and uses these terms!

Mixing = Acclimatising

when you float your bag in your tank to correct the temperature between the two and then slowly mix the water of the two of them together before putting them in the tank.

Ideally with Octos i tend to spend well over 30 mins mixing them, after they have been floated for quite a while. I tend to give 10 minutes for every degree of difference in the water temperatures (for examply, I get a bimac in, my tank is 21 and the bag water is 24 24-21 = 3. 3x10 mins = 30 mins floating before I start mixing the water). I've done this with hundreds of cephs and have only ever lost ones that look like they are dying in the bag and have been badly packed (usually Eldone cirrhosaare the worst)

~Andy

 

[cthulhu77]

See, now here is where we differ...if I am going to blend an octopus, I would never spend 30 minutes doing so...just a couple of pulses, and maybe a diddle with a hand blender...just right!

 

[brett]

i have had a reef tank for years and every time i check the Ph it seems to have never changed and is always at 8.3. I do however add dKh buffer to the water when i add fresh water to the tank. What causes Ph spikes (up or down) in your tanks? and how do you regulate Ph?

 

[Andy Lister]

I use natural incomming sea water pumped in straight from the sea so doon't have to regulate it.

But having a calcium based element in a filter (cockle shell for example) is good for buffering it back to 7.

I know that when we bag and transport sharks that the pH can get to 4 so it must be the way that they metabolise that does it!

~Andy

 

[Jean]

As for octi's dying for no apparent reason..............many are juvenile and in the wild the majority would die (otherwise the earth would sink past the Galactic centre cos of the weight of all the octis!) so it may be nothing we're doing.....just nature taking it's course.


J

 

[Nancy]

Jean, that's what I was thinking - the tank bred bimacs are quite young, often only two months. A few of these have died for no apparent reason.

The wild caught ones we had last year were more like three or four months old, so a selection process had already taken place.

Nancy

 

[Melissa]

the earth would sink past the Galactic centre cos of the weight of all the octis!

What an image!