Bucket of water and an untrained hireling who you pay to follow behind you, carrying your octopus around in said bucket when you're dungeon-crawling?
Bucket (empty): 5 sp
Hireling (untrained): 1 sp per day (that's the mininmum. It's probably a bit more to get them to follow you inside dungeons, but I'm betting not much more. Promise a few fistfuls of gold pieces, 10 or 20 is likely enough assuming your GM knows what average wages for commoners are. Your average commoner would take months to earn what most adventurers, even low-level ones, would consider a fairly small amount of cash, Pay in advance to make it seem more worth the risk to the hireling. Outside of dungeons and dangerous places you could probably get away with the dirt-cheap 1 sp per day.)
I really want to get an octopus familiar for a beast-bonded witch, but I am unsure how to keep it alive before I am high enough level to have magic items to do so.
If you're not in a campaign that keeps you near the sea all the time, it might be a bit awkward but you could just keep it in a bucket. Depending on the size of the octopus, it might need more of a small barrel, of course. (A giant octopus would require at least a 500 gallon barrel, a cart, and a team of horses to take around with you.)
As for what to feed it, octopi eat crabs, crayfish, small fish, snails and molluscs, so you should be able to keep it alive so long as you're at least near water.
I really want to get an octopus familiar for a beast-bonded witch, but I am unsure how to keep it alive before I am high enough level to have magic items to do so.
Why not release the poor octopus from service until you get back to the more oceanic environs? Most of the druids in books I've read regularly release their companions when they aren't adventuring.
edit: Forgot to explicitly mention that you'd be picking up a more terrestrial companion when the octopus is on vacay.
The witch gets her spells from her familiar, so dismissing it is a no go.
Oops, I read octopus and immediately thought druid.
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Some octopus species can survive outside of water for short periods.
See here. Apparently they're fine for several minutes - so bring a bucket and a create water spell.
I don't know, seems cruel to keep your poor familiar in a bucket all the time.
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Well, it can come out for short periods of time without dying. I know there are magic items for landwalkers to function in the water, but is there the opposite?
Probably, since there are water-breathing intelligent races. There were some in 3.5
I'm thinking a magically hardened fishbowl, with little clockwork legs, would be a pretty awesome octopus vehicle. Octopedes are cool. Plus they're very intelligent (at least as smart as monkeys) and can manipulate fine objects.
This thread deals with this issue directly. Some good ideas therein if I do say so myself.
I'd just dedicate one of the small pockets of a Handy Haversack to be it's water-filled resting place
Gonna need an O2 exchanger on that pocket.
In situations like this I have one word: Homebrew. But then again I'm the creative type, I like coming up with clever items or solutions to characters problems.
Yeah it can be. Most of the guys I play with are pretty creative and we work on making things balanced, but I am well aware of how slippery a slope it can be...
I think someone already mentioned the necklace, and I don't think that's what the Ioun stone does in this case...
I'd houserule that the ioun stone that allows breathing without air works as "without oxygen", so it should suffice. You may have to implant it, though, depending on whether there's room for the stone to orbit. (Disregard if it's one of those awesome walking octopi.)