I am fascinated with intelligent marine animals. I’m already going through the motions to purchase an aquarium and accessories for a mantis shrimp and after watching a documentary about the octopus the other night, I did some research on keeping one of those in a separate aquarium.
Has anyone here ever owned an octopus? The research I’ve done says octopi are fairly high-maintenance to keep. Can you tell me about your experiences? How expensive was it for you to keep it since it requires a diet of high-quality (even live) seafood?
There was a seafood restaurant that had an octopus in an aquarium for a while near where I grew up. (Probably early 1980s?) Anyway, the patrons were always very interested in it, especially the children, and when it disappeared, my Dad asked the proprietor about it. They were casual friends, and he confided in Dad that the octopus was the most horribly expensive pain in the ass he’d ever tried to keep in a tank - it was aggressive, a picky eater, hard to clean up after, you name it - he had a laundry list of reasons why he’d never get another one. Apparently it committed suicide somehow by sticking it’s head in a filter opening or something. Hundreds of dollars down the (figurative) drain.
This restaurant owner was a very skilled and experienced reef tank hobbyist. Seahorses, lionfish, anemones, you name it. No problem. That octopus, though… was his Waterloo. YMMV, and I’m sure there’s better technology available these days to help. (Restaurant guy DID have the advantage of having fresh and presumably cheap seafood to feed the critter.)
It’s my understanding that octopi can be fascinating and rewarding to keep, but they can also be frustrating and somewhat depressing due to their short lifespan. Some species typically live only a year or so, and most, as I understand it, live no more than a few years.
Agreed - very very challenging critter to keep happy. Or keep at all - they are very accomplished escape artists, and, being invertebrates, can squeeze through an opening the size of their beak. Oh yes, they come out of the water, and flop about on the floor. Keeping them entertained can be time-consuming too; they need plenty of enrichment daily, or they’ll fret and/or sulk. They can be target trained, if you have lots of patience. http://www.dnatube.com/video/1931/Long-term-memory-in-an-octopus
No hands-on experience w/ octopus, but I have kept a number of reef aquaria with various critter (including some mantis, fwiw). VERY costly equipment and high-maintenance if you wish to keep water quality semi-pristine. And equipment will fail, so you gotta have back-up eqpt (trust me on this!). When something important fails, water goes bad - fast in some cases. Coral is much more sensitive than most ‘animals’, and dies faster overall, but the concept is the same. The idea is to keep the waste from fouling the water, and the more water in there, the longer it takes. But cost of eqpt goes up with size, as well as what is needed (calcium reactor, protein skimmer, water topper-offer thing, etc, etc - and then cost of food, salt mix, chemicals and test kits, ugh…)
And then you need to realize that that octopus is about as smart as a cat (so I hear) and will try to escape. I’ve seen documentaries where an octo got out of tank and went to other side of room to get something it saw - more than once. They will not live very long, either as they have short lifespans anyways (iirc) and living in smallish tank makes it even shorter (probably). DO NOT get a blue-ringed octopus. Just don’t is all I can say due to them being able to kill you very quickly - they will get ya when cleaning tank.
There are all kinds of neat shrimp and such that can entertain for hours - I used to love viewing my tanks at night (total darkness) with the IR camera. What seemed to be just ‘live rock’ had zillions of things that hid when any light was present - the bristleworms could vanish into the tiniest of holes! Of course, I had all kinds of coral that loved the 4000 watts of light I had over the tank, and had to have a cooler on that tank (more $$$).
Look into the cost of equipment for the tank-size you want (at least 150-200g, imho) and what it takes to keep the water clean enough. It is likely more than you think it will be. I always found LifeReef to have the best stuff, though there are other makers. I was never unsatisfied with Jeff, though. Some stuff I made myself, but not everyone can work with plastics.
Good luck with it all. I suggest being able to keep a simpler tank stable before worrying about keeping ‘advanced’ stuff A mantis can be kept in a small tank (like a 10g) once you know how to keep the water chemistry stable over time.
Thanks for the responses all. Based on what I’ve read here, I think I might wait until I make my first million to do this. Just out of curiosity, however: When handling an octopus, how much do I need to worry about its beak? I assume the arms are fairly safe to have wrapped around my hand?
I don’t have any practical octopus knowlege. I just came in here to share a classified ad I saw once in the paper years ago:
For sale: Octopus, currently living in the bathtub. Eats whatever.
For a long time, “eats whatever” was a joke between me and my then-roommate. I wish heartily that I’d gone over to see this octopus in a bathtub, and regret just as much that I’d never cut out and kept the ad. I also would not mind knowing the backstory: how, precisely, does one wind up having an octopus in their bathtub?
I <3 the tree octopus soooo much! I have a t-shirt and a poster from that site. But they’re endangered so you can’t keep them as pets, so there. Instead:
Despite the fact that it is the one part of the octopus that could actually injure you, it is widely regarded as apocryphal that an octopus has ever attacked someone using their beak, or indeed, as deliberate attacked a human diver at all. The singular exemption is the abovementioned blue ringed octopus, but even the number of fatal attacks attributed to that animal can be numbered on the fingers of one hand. This makes a lot of sense from an evolutionary point of view, as injury to the beak will render the octopus incapable of eating and doom it to starvation while it has a number of other means for defense (its natural dexterity and ability to squeeze into tight spaces, expelling ink, using its chromotosphores to camouflage itself or appear to be a more threatening creature, autotomy for some species) that are more reliable.
As noted above octopuses (or octopods, if you like) are master escape artist, and while it is difficult to evaluate invertebrate intelligence against land mammals, I would say that estimating their intelligence as being equal to a house cat is a lower end bound; they demonstrate remarkable problem-solving and communication skills that probably place them closer to a chimpanzee or orangutan. Keeping one as a pet is not only an enormous pain in the ass, but probably cruel to the creature as well as they do need a good deal of stimulation that they can’t receive in any normal sized aquarium. You’re better off getting a membership to a local large aquarium or taking up diving (octopuses can be found in all oceans in shallow, intertidal areas, and will sometimes become acclimated to friendly divers with food) where you can see them in something approaching a natural environment. There is no way you could effectively breed octopuses in home captivity, so you would be dooming it to a short life of anxiety and frustration.
Make sure it’s comfortable with being handled. If it gets scared and inks in the tank you have to do a major water change or the ink can kill the octopus.
For years and years and years my old Marine Invertebrate Zoology professor would allow intertidal octopuses to crawl on his bare hand while he lectured about them ( this was in CA, so it may have been some critter like this, I don’t recall exactly ). Until one time one decided to bite and his hand eventually swelled up like a grapefruit. After that he was less sanguine about handling them.
It’s anecdotal and I wasn’t there, but I regard him as a reliable witness. It may be vanishingly rare, but it appears to be a possibility:).
I used to work in a large public aquarium and the curator in charge of our one octopus often remarked on what a pain in the ass it was. Mainly because it was so good as escaping it’s tank – one time it got into the tank next to it and ate much of the fish over there. They are very smart.
:eek: Okay, so now I don’t only have to worry about a spider crawling across my face in the night, I have to worry about an octopus crawling across my face in the night!? :eek:
It’s not like I keep any octopuses around the house or anything, but this thread is really sort of freaking me out.
A mantis can be kept in a small tank (like a 10g) once you know how to keep the water chemistry stable over time.
and then suddenly I was like :dubious: :smack:. Way to take a cephalopod-loving girl’s heart and break it.