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[Old Board Archive] What else is good to feed?

tonmo

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What else is good to feed?|brunopuss|
I have a "Bali Octo" as many may have seen in my past topic when i "thought" it laid eggs.. ok ok get your laughs out i guess i just got over excited! Any who... I would just like some idea on what to feed him cause im sure his diet is not the best as all it is, is frozen shrimp which i already know anythign frozen isnt the best because it takes the good stuff out of the food so any ideas would help thank ya!



Re: What else is good to feed?|octomonkey|
Hi bruno.....
Heres a good list with where to get them...

fiddler crabs - collect or LFS
edible crabs - seafood shop
crayfish - LFS or seafoodshop or online order
Sea fish - LFS or seafood shop
Sea snails - LFS or collect yourself

There are plenty more but fresh is always best. So are you close to a beach? That always helps.......

Colin


Re: What else is good to feed?|steve_oshea|
Kind of following the thread a bit. We'd flooded our squid tanks with mysid shrimp ~ 5 days ago, and for the first 4 days the squid happily dined away, predator and prey.

We'd been feeding the mysids on brine shrimp nauplii, and they seem to have dined away on those quite nicely.

This evening (just before the 8pm main lights over the tank went out [there are smaller wattage lights mounted on the wall giving low-level night light]) I saw something most peculiar. Four or 5 mysids were each ganging up on a squid paralarva - and the attacks were most vicious!! Prey had become predator!

An hour of netting later and I think we've got the larger mysids out (thousands of them), but all the same, you've really got to be careful in this game.

We might have been feeding the mysids an inappropriate food, or they may well have developed a taste for squid. Morrow we'll ditch the lot (feed to seahorses) and recollect, never adding too many (limiting the prey density), and will ditch and recollect at a regulat interval from this day forth.
O


Re: What else is good to feed?|octomonkey|
Hi Steve

I had similar problems with common shrimps here (palemon) If they didnt get eaten straight away they would eventually either learn to steal other food straight from the octopus or start pestering it.

Also, with small octopuses i have quite commonly removed the crab's claws. I have seen them really fight back with smaller octopuses for a few minutes at least, especially when they get their back's into the corner of the aquarium.

Do the mysids not feed well on normal aquarium fish flakes?? How about stuffing them full of that then throing them in? The flakes have quite a good source of vitamins etc which may pass from shrimp to squid.

When i had baby O. briareus i kept a locally found amphipod for them to eat called Corophium. I fed them fish flakes and they did really well!
C


Re: What else is good to feed?|steve_oshea|
We're doing this very thing Colin - a separate Mysid stock tank, fed the old nutritional fish flake, then dip-netting from it as many mysids as we believe are necessary to satiate the squid on a daily basis.

We tried developing cultures of mysids, as in self-perpetuating, but it was too labour intensive - worked out considerably cheaper to put divers in the water and net the little guys as and when required, then to stock them.

I've had quite a bit of success with catching the mysids in the light traps also, so this is going to become a rather standard way for us to collect fresh and variable food items on a daily basis.

Fish larvae have proven extremely difficult to procure this Winter/Spring as weather conditions have been atrocious. If we had a good supply of these we'd not be experiencing any problems - but establishing cultures of them is both expensive and labour-intensive also; guess we'll have to bite the bullet on this one soon.
Cheers ears
O
 
The octo should be able to take care of itself. If they are huge claws i frequently clip them though, just to be on the safe side... if the octo does get nipped they soon learn how to avoid it next time. They do learn from this...

C
 
I think that would depend on what species are available. Soem of the bracksh species could adpat fine but i dont think that freshwater species would last that long.

The ghost shrimp sold in shops are a freshwater species. Due to their exoskeleton they can stay alive for a while in saltwater but usually only a few hours or overnight at best.

C
 

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