I'm wondering if anyone can tell me about the life cycle of A. Acleatus? eg. hatch in the spring lay eggs in the fall that kind of thing.

I suspect Mucktopus is the best person for that sort of question. I'm putting the species name in the thread title to make it more obvious. I don't see any seasonal info in her recent paper, but I just skimmed it...

The seem to breed almost (if not completely) year round. Eggs take a few weeks to incubate, and hatchlings might spend a month or so in the plankton before settling, but we're not sure. From settling, adults probably live six to eight months, but again we have no verification of this in wild animals. So much yet to learn!

Thanks Mucktopus. I was curious mostly because most of the octopuses that seem to make it to my neck of the woods look like fairly large aculeatus. I have one right now with about a 3" to 4" Mantle and want to have some idea how long he/she will be around.:grin:

That's about full grown, so hopefully a couple more months (including egg-laying if it's a female). The adults are extremely active and pretty easy to find, but juveniles are a lot more elusive and harder to catch, so alas they don't seem to make it into the trade very often.

is a 3 - 4" mantle (7.5 - 10cm) not too big to be aculeatus?

could be a big female

Yes it's a big female and after laying eggs her mantle is about 3 inches. I've seen posts about people who were going to try and raise the babies but they seem to disapear pretty fast with no follow up on what happened. I'm curious to hear about anyones experience.