• 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.

Your octopuses

Lov80

O. vulgaris
Registered
Joined
Dec 5, 2019
Messages
96
Location
Germany
I have heard that not just a few folks had to experience that an octopus that was ordered from far away did not even live a couple month in its new home. While others even arrive dead. Why is that? What's your experience?
 
Octopuses require very specific water chemistry that is easily messed up during the shipping process. Some animals can ink when they are in transit and they will almost always be dead upon arrival when that happens. Other times, the temperature of the water in the box can heat or cool outside of the bounds where the animal can survive, and that can cause it to die as well.

As for the short lifespan of the animal- most cephalopods only live to be about a year old in general, so when an adult is captured from the wild and shipped to a home aquarium, they may only have a few months of life left anyway. These few months can be shortened by non-proper water chemistry in a home aquarium which is why some people only have octopuses that survive for a few months/weeks.
 
In our program (still early days, but so far so good), we can ship via FedEx to the customer's home, but we recommend a FedEx facility near the customer. The octo endures less travel logistics (i.e., less time bouncing around on a local truck), so that the customer can pick it up from the closest source at the earliest time (right when they open) to ensure best health on arrival. @Thales wrote a good article on this topic, here:
 

Shop Amazon

Shop Amazon
Shop Amazon; support TONMO!
Shop Amazon
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon and affiliated sites.
Back
Top