• 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.

preserving an octopus

Jon123

Cuttlefish
Registered
Joined
May 9, 2005
Messages
27
Has anyone ever preserved thir octopus in alcohol or formaldehyde? I know in my biology classroom there are 100's of jars of everything you could imagine, just wondering if anyone has their octopus in a jar on their mantle piece (no pun intended).

Jon
 
How big an octi????

I'd go for 95% ETOH (ethanol) or (if you can afford it!) Isopropylalcohol rather than formalin/formaldehyde. The later is extremely toxic. At the lab here we're in the process of changing all the formalin solutions to alcohol. Certainly for a large specimen you may need to fix it in formalin first (but then you need to get rid of the formalin.....does your school employ a chemical removal company?) and THEN store it in alcohol.

For a small octi (already dead :smile: ) we just place them in alcohol straight away, about 2x volume of alcohol to volume of animal. It seems to work just fine!


Cheers

Jean
 
I was really jsut curious, but I would like to try it once mine is gone (maby 8 months). Its small right now obviously, but it will most likely be average bimac adult size when I try and preserve it. Thanks for the help, Ill take to my biology department as soon as I can to see if they have recommendations or help for me.

Jon
 
formaldahide

I wouldnt use formaldahide since it is a carcinagin a cancer causing agent, and it is highly toxic. So your best bet is the alchohol.
 
Did Steve not post somewhere a while back about how to preserve cephalopods? Try a search through the science section
 

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