[Octopus]: Creepy - O. briareus

DWhatley

Kraken
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Sep 4, 2006
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Location
Cape Coral, FL
Acclimation time: 2 hours
Arrival packaging: Plastic jar with drilled holes
PH: ~8.0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 20 ppm

Our new addition is not named yet but Lynn gave him/her a code name until we come up with something fitting.

Lynn (IslandMarineLife.com) called me Wed. night to say he had traded goods for an octopus from another collector. How the octopus was actually collected was a bit of a mystery as the collector took it from a diver because Lynn had mentioned several months back that I wanted an octopus. I could make some conjecture about the vagueness and this being lobster season but it would only be guessing but nobody's talking about how the diver ended up with it. He warned me it was missing some arm tips and some of the arms were very short but said it was eating well and that the could send it on Thurs. Lynn is not uncomfortable diving around sharks but is terrified about touching an octopus. He needed to transfer it for shipping and was not sure what would happen if the octo refused to go into the new container because if it got loose he was heading out the door :roll:

In any case she/he has a mantle of about an inch and a half, most of its arms had were bitten off close to the webbing a month or two ago and at least one arm has a recent tip removal (hopefully not self inflicted). From what I could see the new arm growth looks healthy. Acclimation was fairly short for water match but I like to feed once before release. Lynn sent along some crabs in with the shipment and Creepy took one in the acclimation/shipping jar so I let him/her finish it before release.

Briareus seem slower than hummelincki about leaving their acclimation bag/container. All three of mine needed coaxing where the hummelincki seem to want out immediately. For awhile, Creepy will live in Bel's old tank. It will eventually be too small but Maya's tank will be available in a month or so and the 45 hex will be fine for at least that long.
 

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Congrats! What a little cutie. I'm totally jealous, being without right now. For the last month I've been too overloaded to even look but I'm in the market now!!!
 
I finally located Creepy at the very back of the tank. This aquarium does not have an opaque back but I do have dark plastic on two of the back panels (hex shaped aquarium). I took a flash light and pulled the panels back to locate him/her just to be sure nothing was amiss since I could not find him in either of the two caves he found the first day.

I am hoping Creepy is a male and will consider trying to mate him with KaySoh if this is the case. This will be a bit tricky since O. briareus is known to be cannibalistic (at least as fry) and I will beg Roy for some advice when the time comes since he has mentioned introducing males and females only for mating. KaySoh's tank is my split tank with two 8" crossover tubes. I am hoping to be able to utilize the split for this purpose but am not sure that this is a viable thought.
 
Congratualtions and :welcome: to Creepy. I am getting a little jealous as I sit here looking at an empty tank. :cry: That makes 3 dosen't it, no fair! :wink:
I can't wait till he/she comes out of hiding and you can take some pictures.
 
Yes, Creepy makes three but you have to remember that my little Maya is brooding so she will stay in her den for about a month the come out and die. This one is incredibly sad because she was so full of piss and vinegar.

I am not likely to get decent pictures of Creepy until she/he moves to the other tank. This tank was set up for a nocturnal and is hexagonal, both making photos difficult. The Canon is far better than the Minolta (old camera) but still has problems with this tank and focus (I use a red light 24/7 that also hinders photography).

Creepy did take a thawed shrimp tonight. I put a flashlight to the back of the tank and encouraged him/her toward the feeding stick that Neal was holding (I physically had to get behind the tank, fortunately we left room for a small chiller). I had tried a piece of shrimp last night but it came off the stick in the back of the tank. Hopefully Creepy or one of the cleaning crew found it. I am thinking Creepy may have because she/he did not need a lot of encouragement tonight (I may not have even needed the flashlight).
 
Creepy still only comes out for supper. We are trying our plastic floating ice cube with zip tie (SueNami's toy for a long time) as a feeding stick in hopes he will start playing with it. He wouldn't come out last night so we floated his shrimp in front of the den and found the device pulled in later in the evening. I worry that he may never socialize because his tank is in the living room. He can see us moving about the kitchen but, unlike the breakfast room, we don't sit for an extended period in the room on a regular basis. Initially, he came out sooner than KaySoh or SueNami but this week he is being more reclusive.
 
I don't think I will ever get photos of Creepy. She/He is never out with the lights on and I have not even seen him/her out at night for two weeks. I know there is activity (and can find him/her in the tank) because, like KaySoh, Creepy has started rearranging the rocks. One large heavy clam shell was hauled up about 18" vertically and then placed at the back of the tank. An even larger shell was taken up about 6" and abandoned. A bit odd because Creepy moved both of these shells to close off the front of her main den about two weeks ago. The new placement is not near a denning area in either case. Because both octos of the same species are moving things around I suspect both are female and we are entering into prebrooding behavior. This would be about the right time of the year since small briareus are most often available in the spring (according to Tom). There is no chance that KaySoh will brood young but a slight possibility that Creepy has mated.
 
Yesterday was not the best day for our octo zoo. I looked for Creepy last night and was surprised I could not find her in her den but the den is in the center of the tank and has opening and crevices all under the LR. Still, it was unusual not to see her with a flashlight. This afternoon I looked again and she still was not in her den so I started looking around the tank and saw her arms exposed at an opening in the LR at the side of the tank. She would not have left her arms exposed once she detected me so I assumed the worst and started figuring out a way to remove her. Fortunately, she had not deteriorated much (but did smell fishy) and I managed to manipulate two of her arms with a bent bamboo skewer to a place I could reach with my fingers. There was no resistence.

She was a lot smaller than KaySoh and her arms never regained full length (as expected) but it does appear that she (like Beldar) may have chewed off the ends of several before she died. KaySoh never showed this affilction and her arms were complete when she died.
 

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