Temperature for a bimac

[SniperX8]

hey i got a bimac, but what should be the temperature of the tank for a bimac? and how long would a bimac live?

 

[monty]

hey i got a bimac, but what should be the temperature of the tank for a bimac? and how long would a bimac live?

Nancy's bimac care sheet at Cephalopod Care says 65-72F. I think the prevailing belief is that lower temperatures seem to be associated with longer life, so chillers are recommended... you might want to search for "bimac chiller" or similar.

This thread Happy Birthday, Mr. Octopus says DHyslop kept Mr. Octopus around 70, but without a chiller so up to 80 on hot days, and he was a very long-lived bimac... possibly the low temperatures in Zyan's octopus farm (see post #13 there) early in Mr. Octopus' life were more important than the adult tank temp.

How old/big is your octo, and where did it come from? Are you sure if it's a bimac? I believe the O hummelincki that are sometimes sold as "pygmy bimac" or "Caribbean bimac" are more tropical....

 

[gjbarord]

20-23 C, though the colder temperatures will yield longer life spans, in most cases.

Greg

 

[monty]

20-23 C, though the colder temperatures will yield longer life spans, in most cases.

Greg

just 'cause I suspect people will ask, that's 68-73.5F

metric-shmetrick

 

[SniperX8]

ya its a bimac, i couldnt figure it out what kind until it was in the tank and i saw the fake eye on each side with the blue ring, its mantle is the size of about half a ping pong ball. the LFS doesnt know what ocean it came from but just said its an octopus from the ocean lol. He looks pretty small, he has been hiding in the corner/ back of the tank since i put him in yesterday, he ate only 1 krill though he pushed away the rest of the krill with his arm. I named him cortez after the sea of cortez, its kinda cheezy but its funny.

 

[Animal Mother]

Other octos besides bimacs show the blue eyespots, like O. hummelincki, as suggested by Monty. You might check them out to be sure. I'd say if yours has a habit of looking "spikey" fairly often, it's probably hummelincki (aka filosus). Pictures please!?!?

 

[SniperX8]

sry for the bad image/resolution, my camera sucks lol
hes eating a piece of krill in these pics

 

[DWhatley]

Sniper8X,
Check my pics on Octane's thread , especially the walking video and the video of Tuvalu (not great pictures either but clearer)

[Octopus]: - Octane - O. Hummelincki (filosus)

to see if your new friend looks similar. The importance of determining which of the two - Caribbean Two-Spot (hummelincki) vs Pacific Two-Spot (bimac) - is the tank temperature settings. The Pacific octo needs colder temperatures but the Caribbean animal would not likely fair well at 70 degrees as it lives in shallow, warm water reefs.

 

[Nancy]

I would keep it at about 75-76 degrees until you're absolutely sure it's a bimac. There are a several different species with eyespots on the market right now. It's rare that bimacs are sold unless someone is breeding them, and we are unaware of that.

Compare the eyespot with the one shown in my Bimac Care Sheet - it has to look like that to be a bimac. It's also quite difficult to see the details of an eyespot when the octopus is quite small. So what do you think?

Here's a link to Cephbase showing O. filosus )(now O. hummelincki) and you can see the eyespot.
http://www.cephdev.utmb.edu/imgdb/i...D=&CephID=531&Location=&Keywords=&LowestTaxa=

Nancy

 

[socal_saltwater]

i think Nancy's list is right on, however there's a LOT of wives' tails regarding keeping octos. I had a California 2-spot that i found here in local waters, in my 73-degree water w/ the smallest chiller money can buy, and he did fine (and was old/large when i found him). i think that, like a lot of organisms, they adapt. and, if you consider that in the wild in a place like SoCal, they're in water with a HUGE range of temperatures - colder, deeper areas around 58-64 degrees, then in smaller, warmer pools of water like when i found mine. There was BARELY any water and he was under a rock...the water felt like 78 degrees at the coolest! i was amazed he wasn't dead...but like i said, they adapt to whatever pool of water they're in.

also, people say you need a huge amount of water which isn't entirely proven. At the Cabrillo Aquarium in San Pedro, CA, i visit a 7 year old 2-spot Bimac which is HUGE! Its mantle is about the size of a squash with very long arms, and they have her in a 60 gallon tank. so, nowhere does it say an octo needs a ton of water to survive. Just look at the very little amount of water that are in tidepools that they love to hang out in.

i think overall the saltwater hobby tends to push people into buying a lot of unnecessary stuff. there's a guy in KoreanTown (LA) who actually has LIVE, HEALTHY saltwater fish in systems with NO filtration systems...only aerators...unreal, i know, but....he swears by it and he's a wise, 80 year old Japanese fellow...interesting stuff though, either way!

 

[robyn]

I think its important to distinguish between size of tank vs. water volume. You say:

"also, people say you need a huge amount of water which isn't entirely proven. At the Cabrillo Aquarium in San Pedro, CA, i visit a 7 year old 2-spot Bimac which is HUGE! Its mantle is about the size of a squash with very long arms, and they have her in a 60 gallon tank."

This aquarium is right on the edge of the ocean, so I'm guessing that that 60g tank is on a flow-through. Meaning the water volume is being continually replaced and waste is not building up. In a closed system where whatever you put in the tank is the only water that octo ever gets, the more water the better. Its not the dimensions that count.

Same thing with temperatue - a brief exposure to a hot, nasty tidepool is not the same as being in a hot, nasty tank, day in, day out until the animal dies.

Also, 7 years is pretty damn old for an octopus (particularly a bimac, I think). Any one else have any idea how likely that is?

 

[monty]

I would second that I have never seen any publication of any sort that does not describe the lifespan of bimaculatus and bimaculoides as less than two years, usually one. I'm not a professional marine biologist or aquarist, but I am very well-read on this, so I really would say that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" in this case. GPOs and perhaps the similarly large octos (I can't think of the species) Jean keeps in NZ may be able to live for 7 years, but for a bimac it's unheard of. I don't think vulgaris can live more than 3 either, but I'm less confident about that; still I'd be shocked to see even vulgaris living 7. In fact, I'd be pretty shocked to hear about a GPO living for 7 in captivity, although I wouldn't say "that's practically impossible," just "that's very, very unusual." I suppose, since I'm in the L.A. area, I could go and investigate at Cabrillo-- I've been wanting to go there anyway...

 

[Joe-Ceph]

Nancy's advice to be SURE that you have a bimac before you drop the temp makes a lot of sense. My policy for making decisions like this is to get advice from people with experience (like you are doing) and to, when in doubt, do whatever nature does. Bimacs live in Southern California, and the water temp here ranges between about 57 degrees (in Feb) to about 68 (Aug).
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/dsdt/cwtg/spac.html
Bimacs can live in tidepools, which can get much hotter (and saltier) than the ocean, but never for longer than it takes the tide to come back in, so I hesitate to put a bimac at a constant temp above 68 degrees. This opinion is not based on experience (I'm still in the process of setting my bimac tank up) but I'm planning to insulate my tank like crazy, and my chiller will easily be able to keep the temp as low as I might want so I'm going to play it safe and try to stay within the range defined by the habitat my bimac will come from. I'm either going to keep it at a constant 63 degrees, or maybe even change the temp every month to keep in step with the ocean temp. Again, this decision is based solely on my "do what nature does" policy, and not on any actual experience, and from what some of the other posts say I may end up just wasting some electricity. Just MHO

 

[Animal Mother]

Nancy's advice to be SURE that you have a bimac before you drop the temp makes a lot of sense. My policy for making decisions like this is to get advice from people with experience (like you are doing) and to, when in doubt, do whatever nature does. Bimacs live in Southern California, and the water temp here ranges between about 57 degrees (in Feb) to about 68 (Aug).
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/dsdt/cwtg/spac.html
Bimacs can live in tidepools, which can get much hotter (and saltier) than the ocean, but never for longer than it takes the tide to come back in, so I hesitate to put a bimac at a constant temp above 68 degrees. This opinion is not based on experience (I'm still in the process of setting my bimac tank up) but I'm planning to insulate my tank like crazy, and my chiller will easily be able to keep the temp as low as I might want so I'm going to play it safe and try to stay within the range defined by the habitat my bimac will come from. I'm either going to keep it at a constant 63 degrees, or maybe even change the temp every month to keep in step with the ocean temp. Again, this decision is based solely on my "do what nature does" policy, and not on any actual experience, and from what some of the other posts say I may end up just wasting some electricity. Just MHO

That's the right idea. It's very important to take that approach with any creature, replicating its natural environment.

 

[Nancy]

Yes, and what I was saying is based on the limited availability of true bimacs, the fact that many species have eyespots, the inability of the LFS or even online supplier to identify a species.

Your don't want to put a tropical species in chilly water.

People have kept bimacs in the low seventies without a chiller, using fans on the sump, lowering the home air conditioning in summer and so forth. The bimacs did well.

One of the best sources for information about bimacs in warm tidepools was Octopets, a breeder of bimacs that no longer is in business. They were located on a southern California lagoon where bimacs lived. Many bimacs spent the entire day in small tidepools when the temperature was 85 degrees outside and their water was quite warm.

So I think you need to identify the speces as quickly as possible, but if you have a very young octopus, that can be difficult.

Nancy