Should I be worried?

[Smeapancol]

I have tried feeding my octopus saltwater shrimp because they are cheaper than the hermit crabs I've been giving him, but he seems to have trouble catching them. I'm wondering if I should go back to hermit crabs or if it'll be ok to keep giving him these shrimp. I have put six shrimp in the tank since thursday and right now (it's Monday afternoon) I can still see four shrimp in the tank.

He's probably about four inches in diameter from tenticle to tenticle and he's been eating roughly 2 blue leg hermit crabs a day for the past few weeks. The shrimp look like they are about as big as two or three hermit crabs, so I'd have expected him to eat 3-5 of those shrimp by now since it's been 5 days since I started putting them in there, but he's eaten at most two.

Any advice on this would be most appreciated!

 

[Fishfreak218]

when i used to feed shrimp to my leaf fish i would 'stun' them first by taking them in my hand and shaking them rlly hard to hit them against the sides of my hand... and the temp change was dramatic which slowed them down for the leaf fish to catch..
hth a little

 

[Nancy]

I think you should plan on crabs being the main food, and use good quality frozen shrimp (thawed) as a second food. You may be able to use more shrimp and fewer crabs, but your octopus should have some live food.

My bimac also had trouble with the shrimp. They are good little scavengers, so just leave some in the tank. Ollie finally figured out how to catch them - this involved hanging upside down at the water level at night (she turned almost black for this activity) and somehow she caught almost all of them in one night - even if I put in lots. I used them for variety, not as a main foood source.

Make sure you get some other food for your octo right away - live crabs, or frozen shrimp would be best.

Nancy