Hi all. I hope to be an addition here, and bring a little something to the board. I SCUBA dive and do saltwater tanks (as I'm sure many of you here do as well:wink:). I am also studying to do underwater photography and am after a degree in Marine Zoology, specifically cephalopod biology. I hope I can be helpful here.:smile:

:welcome: to TONMO

:welcome: sounds like you'll fit right in!

:welcome: sounds like you'll fit right in!

:welcome:

Thanks much, for the kind welcome.

I like this smily::sink:

Makes me smile.:wink:

Sure thing. We look forward to any and everything you can contribute! Everybody likes good pictures too, so if you have any you've taken please share.

:welcome:

:welcome:

Sure thing. We look forward to any and everything you can contribute! Everybody likes good pictures too, so if you have any you've taken please share.


No camera OR cephs at the moment. School is too demanding. I have a 29 gallon reef tank. Very simple. I have a psychedelic dragonet, maroon clown, Condy anemone, Crimson shrimp, pearly jawfish, red skunkshrimp, and a green clown blenny. As well as assorted crabs and snails. I'm really proud of the dragonet. Got her to trigger readily at frozen mysis shrimp as well as live.

I think the advice about dragonets being kept solitary may be reverse of what is best for them. Mine learned to eat frozen from a seahorse and then taught her newly introduced mate very quickly. I have since lost my female but the male has always eaten frozen mysis and Cyclop-eeze since his introduction to tank life, two years ago.

Hmm. That is indeed interesting. I've never heard of them exibiting that behavior. This tank is so sparcely populated that it is similar to them being alone though. Mine is very personable. She likes to come up to the glass whenever I walk by. She even dislplays for me every once in a while. Sad about your female. I've been waiting to get this little gal for some time, and I hope she stays with me for a while.

Dini (dragonnett) and Trigger (erectus seahorse) were quite a pair. At first I was afraid Trigger was interested in harming the fish because he paid such obvious attention. Our guess is that he noticed that live food would come out where the fish traveled but it was more interesting when we realized that Dini was also watching what Trigger ate and began eating the frozen mysis. I suspect there is a lot of mixed species observation that we miss, particularly with octopuses.

Yes, that is probably true. Pretty much fact really. You can tell this by simply observing your own octos. The ones I have kept all seem to love to people-watch. one even liked TV! Very interesting to see how they react to certain species introductions.

I was thinking about your comment. Could it be similar to mammal impressionism (unsure of proper term) where an animal like a rabbit associates with dogs, after an interval of observation?

Octodude,
I am not sure but the degree of attention was too strong to misunderstand it. I have not seen any other of my assorted critters do anything similar but believe it happens on a less observable level. One of my reasons for thinking that octopuses may do something similar is the fact that most do not live in colonies and survive on a variety of foods (depending on availability in the area). It would make an interesting study. There have been studies to attempt observational learning octopus to octopus (with mixed results) but I have not seen any mention of octopus observing other, not considered food, creatures.

I wasnt implying that the behavior was misunderstood. If I gave that impression it was a mistake on my part. I am hopefully going to be conducting a study throughout the summer on octopus learned behavior. But the example I was citing was in reference to your story about your dragonet and seahorse.

oops, I did not take your suggestion as a challenge ;>). I am not well educated in behavior and not diciplined in my observations so I feel compelled to overstate that my observations are only that but would invite more qualified people to both comment and attempt to prove or disprove the ideas that are formulated.

Please start a continuing thread about your summer experiments and what you learn or fail to learn. We often hear from people that start up a ceph environment to study behavior but rarely get the details or results. More complete info would be both interesting and a platform for others to build on, regardless of the success of the trials.

Well, generally observations by octopus keepers can be very helpful. But the summer experiment is hanging by a thread right now. alot has to fall into place before I am able to do that. But if I am I will be sure to report my results