when it dies...

[larkinvalley]

If your octo dies each half a year - what should an ideal octo tank be
like?

I mean, I guess when it dies, it always decays to some degree before you find it, so maybe the entire system needs a restart, no?

[Gonodactylus]

Often when they die, they come out of their lair. Or if we are talking natural senescence, you can tell from a lost of color and muscles in the skin that they are on there way out. I usually help them on their way the last day or two. This is not like having a "sick" octopus that you hope will recover. With senescence there is no "recovery".

Roy

[bchristie]

I agree, most often the kindest solution is to put the specimen down befroe it gets too bad...in the wild they will often roam aimlessly after hatching of the eggs, making them easy prey, though in aquariums they live past this point, and decay to an unnatural degree.

[Zestay]

so how do you put them down? freeze them? microwave them?

[larkinvalley]

but what if you miss the moment and it decays in its burrow - would all the LR and everything else die?

[bchristie]

If it dies in the burrow it will start to decompose, in some cases they may release all of their ink when they die, and in smaller systems you may walk in the room to find a black cloudy tank. The tank itself should not crash and die...so long as you find it, remove the dead octo, and perform a few large water changes quickly enough. If you have corals in with your octo you may see some extreme stress or die off though. I've seen octos die and get pretty bad though, where small inverts such as hermit crabs and snails (the ones that hadn't been eaten) survived. Anenomes usually will survive as well.

As for how to euthanize an octopus, this has been a subject of great debate...there are several methods (microwave not being one of them), freezing is the preferred method for large specimens, and is generally considered humane. Ethanol is the best method for small octos, start at a 1% solution to sedate the specimen, then add more ethanol to get to 5% where the anesthesia becomes terminal in a few minutes (use 2% and increase to 10% if you use a distilled spirit such as vodka). The fish anesthetics MS-222 (tricane methanesufonate) and quinaldine are generally considered inhumane, as they cause quite a bit of distress. There is a paper by Dr. Roland Anderson of the Seattle Aquarium which sums up all of these methods quite concisely:

http://www.colszoo.org/internal/drum...r/pdf/1996.pdf

There are a few other options, but they are a bit more complex; a colleauge and I have a paper coming out soon in that same journal on the use of benzocaine (the stuff the dentist swabs on your gums before injecting novacaine), but for the home aquarist freezing or ethanol are the quickest, easiest, most humane options.

[nib420247]

my first fish that I euthanized was a ich infested pacu when I was young, I put it in a plastic bag and gave him a big wack on the steps outside, instant death and much more humane than the ich. my friend is a trapper and sells fur of the animals he catches and he used a needle to inject acetone, they die quickly and when he told me I pictured a slower painful death and told him he was sick in the head and a few days later he showed me a video of him injecting a skunk with the needle on the end of a 5' long pole, he walked up slowly and injected the skunk in the neck slowly, it died in a few seconds and didnt even try to spray him, not sure its for everyone but, acetone is paint thinner and not sure whare the needles come from, maybe a diabetic.

[cutnup]

lol poor pacu...just flush him

[lessthanlights]

Originally posted by cutnup
lol poor pacu...just flush him

DO NOT FLUSH LIVE FISH.

[jdoenumber2]

I bet he would of clogged the drain.

[dawnskaybug]

Donot flush fish just think about it if he clogs up the toilet then ya got to use the plunger.. .

[justinl]

yeah flushing live fish is like putting fish in a FW dip... and forgetting about it. minus the turbulence and the rollercoaster ride down the pipes. quite inhumane. and if the fish is large, then yeah there's a good chance of a clogged drain.

the whacking or acetone method actually could be best if you could stomach it. either that or ethanol or freeze.

[ybenormal]

A few drops of Eugenol in a little water works great to put a fish under for examination or treatment. Higher doses or leaving the fish in the solution for an extended period of time will result in a quick and painless death. You can buy this toothache product for a few bucks in any drug store and in the heath care aisle of most grocery stores.

[cuda6872]

Take it to your local sushi bar & honor the lil guy by rights of the food chain. Just call it "the last enjoyment."

I know, I'm not right. Bad Mike, Bad Mike!

[huskerreef]

Early in my hobby career I had and angel die so I quickly wisked him off to the throne for a quick disposal only to have it get stuck somewhere and plug it up. It was a slow drain type of plug and it took about two weeks for it to clear itself out, couldn't get it with a plumbing snake.

[Opcn]

Flushing fish can introduce pathogens into the environment, a bad idea.

[huskerreef]

I doubt it.

[Opcn]

Yeah, well I've seen contamination from home aquaria first hand. Not all sewage is well treated, even in the US.

[ybenormal]

Such as?

[Opcn]

Such as an outbreak of tropical anchorworms in sculpin in anchorage alaska one summer (they didn't make the winter).

I really find it astonishing that you are resiting me on this, it seems to be a pretty straight forward thing. Moving deseases around=bad. HR and YBN, do you really think that our sewar systems are 100% effective 100% of the time? I think you would have to be crazy to think that, and if you don't then you would have to be crazy to do anything that would risk potentially billions of dollars of environmental dammage just for the convinance of flushing a fish rather than wraping it up and thoring it in the trash (because believe it or not, land fill run off is treated more seriously than raw sewage). If you have a septic system and don't live in porous soil or especially near to a body of water I suppose it would be safe to flush a fish, but city sewar systems are not set up to sterilize water.

[ybenormal]

I am not "resiting" you on anything. You made a statement that you had seen contamination from home aquaria first hand and I was interested in hearing some examples of what you had seen. Maybe you need to calm down just a bit and quit being so defensive?

Since you've decided to challenge my thoughts on this, I guess I'll respond. First of all, you mentioned that disposal of fish in sewars spreads pathogens. According to dictionary.com, a pathogen is
"any disease-producing agent, esp. a virus, bacterium, or other microorganism". The example you provided in your later post involved anchor worms (two words) which are parasites--not pathogens. Also, what research can you provide that trace this outbreak back to home aquaria, much less someone flushing a small fish (this basic point of this whole discussion)?

IRT sewers not being set up to sterilize water, you are absolutely correct. They are set up to carry the runoff or wastewater to a treatment plant or distant drainage area. One point for you. I would argue that disposing of dead animal carcasses in landfills has just as much if not more potential for spreading pathogens though since they are frequented by birds and wild animals that have learned to consider landfills as a major source of food. They then spread bacteria and disease to other animals and even to humans in some cases.

For the record, I flush small fish and bury larger ones and I will continue to do so in the future. All are dead before they are flushed or buried and I concur that we should not flush live fish--ever. Now maybe we can get back to the topic of this thread?

[Opcn]

I stated that I had seen contamination from home aquariums, not pathogens.

I simply assumed you were resisting because you called me on something, continuing along the line the HR fell into of specifically denying the widely accepted claim that I made. I never made the claim that I could trace the cause back to a flushed fish, I can however prove that raw sewage has leaked from a trailor park into the stream feeding that lagoon.

By sewars I means our sewage treatment systems, picking at semantics doesn't make my argument any less valid.

You should bury your small fish too, a small fish can carry pathogens just as well as a large fish. As for land fills animals that pick at landfils tend to have very acidic stomachs and very powerful immune systems, both of which will kill most pathogens and parasites.

[ybenormal]

You somehow managed to carry the conversation from flushed fish to pathogens to bacteria and then end up attributing your observations to raw sewage from a trailer park. That you can prove that the sewage did leak into the lagoon does not equate to proof that it was the cause of the anchor worm problem. Possible or even likely, maybe, but hardly proof positive and not even remotely related to the topic of flushing fish.

This has been an interesting conversation but I see nothing in any of your comments that truly supports your original point, is backed by documented evidence of cause and effect or that will convince me to change what I do with small dead fish. I will bury this discussion though as it has nothing to do with the topic of this thread.

[Opcn]

Its proof that its possilbe, I never said that I had proof that it happened. I'm adressing a possibility, and advocating the best way to dispose of an animal. Its absolutely related 100% to flushing fish, thats why I brought it up, as a reason not to flush fish.

The origional question was answered, and a side topic was brought up, I adressed the dangerous side topic. Just because you are willing to do something you know could cause harm because you are to lazy to change your habits unless you see someone document how it has caused harm doesn't mean that everyone who lurks here is as irresponsible as you.

[Captain Bucket]

Just a quick comment:

I work in the wastewater (sewage) industry. The Federal Govt. issues permits (called NPDES) to every Wastewater treatment plant in the country, detailing specific and unique parameters each facility must meet to operate. In almost every instance (and in every instance of freshwater or inland receiving waters) facilities are required to disinfect their effluent (usually by means of chlorine, ultraviolet, or ozone).

There are times like heavy rains, and power failures, where these measures are thwarted, but by in large, it should be perfectly fine to flush your dead fish, providing of course it is small enough to pass.

Lots of facilities do however have trouble with freshwater snails taking up residence in certain parts of their process, and I'm sure there are other organisms that may do so as well, so please use extreme prejudice in what and when you flush.