I've got the 55 gallon cycling for new octo , much info is needed

[marinerules]

Hey guys , I currently have the 55 gallon tank up and cycling cause I am wanting somehting different I already had the 55 gallon , but I took the fish I wanted to keep from it to my other tank, and I tore the 55 down and restarted it casue I wanted to change soem things ,



here is what i have so far I have 1/2 inch of live sand and i have 40 lbs of live rock , I havent got a real good pretoien skimmer yet but im planning on getting one in the future

HOW LoNG do i need to let my aquarium settle in and cycle before i get teh octo , also


HERE IS another main point

I dont really want to get the octopus at my petstore, simply becasue when he gets his fish in , he sells them two days later and I know that will stree the octo out if i get it from him casue it will have to adapt to somethign two times, but I am afraid to get one on the internet becasue of it arriving dead

where is the best place to buy them online and also how big do biamacs get

I dotn want a baby the size of a quarter i want soemthign Im going to be able to see

[rojasredrum]

i am cycling a tank now also but i know that if you get a really big octo is usually doesnt live long. the life span is not very long for one to begin with.

[OctoMonkey]

id let the aquarium cyclw with about 10 mollies for about 3 months to make sure... you could use 3 or 4 damsels but these need to come out before octo goes in.

buy a captive bred baby from octopets.com, these will have the longest lifespan and dont remove octos from the wild.

bimacs can get up to 24" arms and as rojasredrum said a big one wont live as long

[marinerules]

im not watnign a huge one , but i would ike one with a mantle of at least 2 inches, ive ehard of soem people having them so small that they never see it lol , my friend had one and I LOVED HIS bimac, mollies, arent they freshwater ?

[OctoMonkey]

yes and no... if you acclimatise them slowly over a few hours they do well in brackish and full marine water... some of the nicest mollies i have ever seen were in marine tanks.

I have a black molly in my freshwater tank that has been to SW and back 3 or 4 times he's a veteran test pilot ;)

[marinerules]

lol thats funny ok i will do this , too bad it has to be for three months :( but oh well ,

[OctoMonkey]

well, 3 month is just a guide, id suggest that for any marine tank before putting in sensitive stock :)

[marinerules]

that is what I will do if need be , but what if My tank has 0 on all the parameters like is is suppossed to be after about two weeks with the mollies, is it not safe then ?

[joefish84]

just get to know the owner of the lfs well and work out a deal where u come in when oct arrives and he just hands you the shipment bag. then it never touches the store tank which is an iffy tank anyway.