In regards, to live feeds, we're mainly looking at amphipods and mysids, which we recently discovered can be easily shoveled and sieved out of the sands at the local beaches here provided it isn't too cold. The mysids in particular were plentiful at the transition between the sand and a rocky shoreline. Not sure if anything like this exists in the states though (I presume it does somewhere if a related species exists, try genus Archaeomysis). Hand feeding these critters to our babies last year proved successful, although we had already been keeping the babies for a couple weeks on a mix of chopped up dead whelks, mussel, and crab meat prior to the discovery by the Prof. from a local source. The dead feeds kept them alive long enough for us to establish a supply of live animals, but we found none of these feeds could sustain juveniles for sustained periods (probably two months max, with most not getting to that age). As these juveniles had already become acclimated to being fed, we just did as we always did even after switching to live food. Still, the response was definitely much stronger with live prey, and the struggling definitely provoked much more active feeding among juveniles. This year we're thinking about just releasing the 'pods into the enclosures with the octopuses, and putting some sand in to encourage the critters to stay at the bottom. Not sure if the octopuses will like the sand, but there have been reports that juveniles of other species do burrow in the sand, which would allow them to encounter the prey, unlike in the previous cases we had with pelagic mysids.
