Yes, saterday I finally found an octopus. Don't know the specie. I heard someone in the shop saying it was indopacfic, but I'm not sure. Most obvious feature are funny horns on it's eyes!
Anyone recognizes this specie?


Unfortunatly it lost 4 legs during it's life, but it doesn't seem to care that much. Do they fully regrow?

Ciao, Rutger

Hi Rutger,

I know I've seen pictures of this species, but I can't place it right off. Did you buy the octopus and is it in your aquarium now?

He's had a hard life, losing 4 arms. They are supposed to grow back. Even with only 4 arms, he's a handsome octopus.

Nice tank decor, too.

Nancy

Yes, I bought it last saterday and it's getting used to my tank. I have got some soft coral, sponges and discanemones in it and a red seastar I just bought. To make it look nice even if the octopus is hiding.

Also got some mussels and oysters in the tank (alife from the supermarket) but it hasn't touched them yet. Maybe a bit to big for a small octopus with 4 arms.

Tonight I placed a peeled shrimp, attached to a rock by a fishing line. It hasn't touched it eather, but I hope it will it later on tonight.

Anyone who regonizes this specy, please let me know.

How big is it?

It's head is about 4 cm, it longest arms are about 20cm

Hi Rutger,

Let me take a guess at the species - I thinnk it might belong to the Octopus horridus species complex, because of its small mantle size and very long arms. Also, horridous's arms are capable of being severed near the base and serve as decoys for preditors. The arms do regenerate.

These octopuses are day active, and eat fish and small crabs. They come from the tropical waters of the Indian and central and western Pacific ocean.

So does anyone else have a different idea for the species? Also, maybe a second photo would help.

Nancy

A second opinion:

I agree with Nancy. I was looking at the O. horridus complex in Mark Norman's nifty little book, and thought that might be a good start. I've been trying to find some better pictures of the things, since the photos of the species in Cephalopods were all taken from above with the subjects resting on the bottom. The dorsal aspect alone isn't enough for a stupe like me to make more than a trepid guess. Thinking O. aculeatus, maybe?

:bluering:

:bonk:

This species is part of the horridus complex and is closest to being aculeatus! (well done Um..)... at present this group of cf. aculeatus are being studied in detail and classified by a student of Dr Roy Caldwell. So there should be proper ID keys available at some point and no doubt the entire group revised.

it is the most commonly imported species that i have seen in the UK, unfortunetly it is pretty much full grown :(

They would be an ideal aquarium species as they dont get very large and tend to be diurnal, also will feed from hands very quickly.

Drawbacks are that they are imported as adults (short aquarium lifespan) and are a small egg species (hard to rear paralarvae)

I have only had good feeding results by using live crabs like shore crabs.

There have been several accounts of this species on TONMO.com and its worth a SEARCH for aculeatus... I think a member had one called shaggy? and Jscott had some good info on them too...

have fun with octo :)

Colin

PS the arms will regrow to an extent.. depend son how long it lives but it wont hold your quadopus back!

Wow i like the pic, good find and nice work identifying it everyone!!! Well i looked a bit mimickish but when I looked up on it, sure enough you guys were right!

The legs probably won't grow back fully considering it doesn't have too much time left, but just for the record, it would grow back fully if it had more time.

Many Many more pictures.

See this link: http://www.zeewaterforum.net/forums/index.php?board=25;action=display;thread id=7345

It looks like I got a daylight animal, so I can get some great pictures. It is amazing in color changes, as you can see on the pictures. A stripe, spots, star eyes.

It didn't eat the shrimp I placed in the water last night (see attachement).
Just bought a black molly, hope it will eat this one

I become more positive that I got this Octopus aculeatus. It surely is awake during the day, it's just sitting in the left front corner while lights are on. Unfortunatly it isn't eating the molly that is swimming around in the tank. It's should eat something soon.

Anyone an idea to get it eating (the LFS caught it in the tank by placing a trap with a dead calamari as bait). And now it is refusing dead shrimp and life molly.

I had similar problems!!! got to be live crabs im afraid!

Wow, what excellent photos nightlife, I liked the fourth one best. As for the eating part, Maybe you might want to let it settle down and get used to its new environment. Try putting a few hermit crabs in for the time being and he should eat pretty soon. Good Luck

Hi and welcome!!

What an excellent octo you have! Enjoy every moment he's with you! What kind of camera? The shots are excellent!

Carol

Lovely pictures and interesting environment for your octopus.
My cuttlefish ate live shrimp, but some octopus find them difficult to catch? It is important to find something for your octopus to start eating, you can try to change to something more convenient or cheaper later?
You mentioned it was caught in the shop using calamari as bait- would it eat that?
You can see the health and enthusiasm for life of your pet once it starts feeding.

Will it be able to make it to the weekend without crabs? When added to the tank, it should eat fast because these crabs come from the nordsea (very chikky now), so probably doný stay alife very long in the warm aquarium (24 celsius).

I have canon ixus 400, it's truly a fabulous camera. Especially the macro mode.

Any indication how long it will life? a few months? half a year? a year?

If i was to be really negative i could say that its not feeding because it is a mature adult looking for a place to spawn... it has happened before to people on the site. Hopefully, this is not the case here!!! :) But it may be a fertilsed adult or a male that has mated??? Worst case scenario is that it lost its arms being torn away from its den where it had eggs?

The longest I have kept one of these octopuses is around 6 weeks or so, not much longer.

You could bring the crabs slowly to room temperature, say overnight and then raise their temp to tank temp after that?

This is one of the most annoying and frustrating things about keeping cephalopods. At least in the USA it is really easy to buy captive bred bimacs. Over here I have ordered 'vulgaris' on at least a dozen ocassions and opened a box to find cf. aculeatus or bocki or even species that i have no idea what they were????

My first octopus was an adult long-arm species like horridus but it never stopped me!!!

If i had the space I would be breeding bimacs, Sepia, Rossia and Eledone or at the very least.. rearing eggs!!!!

Even if it is an older octopus, you're giving it a good home and you can learn a lot about octopuses by watching and interacting. It's a very handsome octopus. Does it have a name yet?

Nancy

After mussels, oysters, black molly, peeled shrimp I tried a small crab.
Still no feeding! :cry:

Are you leaving them in overnight?

Sorry this seems to be problem :(

mussels and oysters life in the tank. The molly for 1 night, haven't seen it afterwards, but don't think to octo got it. I had a molly in there before but they seem to have problems with the night (to many critters around).
The peeled shrimp was in there for one night, afterwhich I removed it.
The crabs have been in the tank since yesterday.

Why is it a problem?

I mean the problem with it not eating...

it could be that there is plenty amphipods in your tank which it is feeding on? I had an O. bocki that seemed to refuse all for ages, but was eating amphipods etc

Amphipods are exactly?

I haven't seen it eat anything at all.

small shrimp like animals that come in live rock and soon muliply in an octopus tank.

http://www.uaf.edu/seagrant/NewsMedia/02ASJ/images/amphipod.jpg click that :)

Hi colin
thanks for your quick reply
Your link doesn't work, curious how those amphipods look like

worked for me :)

how about...
http://www.thaireef.com/images/creature/amphipod.jpg

http://www.epa.gov/glnpo/image/57.jpg

http://daac.gsfc.nasa.gov/CAMPAIGN_DOCS/OCDST/Graphics/beringsea_amphipod.jpg

if they dont work try this...

http://images.google.com/images?q=amphipod&svnum=100&hl=en&lr=&ie =UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&start=20&sa=N

hope that does it :)

Hi Colin,

I do see skins of these amphipods flooting around once in a while, so they are in the tank, but I don't know how many, since I haven't seen any alife. Do you think I should worry about it not eating, although I have food available?

well, its not perfect.

id like to see an octopus eat every second day but its hard to tell what yours may or may not be eating.

I have in the past tied a live crab to fishing line (not easy :) ) and left it near the front all night and see if it gets eaten or try a piece of shrimp on a line and dangle it near the octopus as if its alive

Any luck yet? Aculeatus in the wild tend to break crabs/shrimps/stomatopods apart a bit when they feed, so chances are the amphipod exoskeletons in the tank are molts rather than table-scraps. It's possible it did eat the fish if you haven't seen it around the tank lately. Sometimes when they eat minnows or gobies they don't leave anything behind. Worth another try. The best luck I've had is with live crabs (de-clawed if the octo is old or seems tired/losing coordination). Was the shrimp you gave it still cold? If it still has a desire to feed, by now it should be pretty hungry, so it might be worth trying again with a small (about 1 cm cube) piece of thawed shrimp (shell on) if you don't have crabs or more fish. Pierce it on a small piece of wire on a small stick (so the octo can pull it off) and gently touch the suckers with the shrimp so the octo can taste it. If it pushes it away after all this time not feeding, chances are it's really not hungry.

Welcome to TONMO.com, mucktopus! :welcome:

Are you keeping an octopus, or have kept one? You might want to tell us about yourself in the Introduce Yourself forum.


Nancy

Hi Mucktopus, you are not working with Dr Caldwell are you? :)

I don't think it eat the fish. Before I got the ocvtopus, I had 2 other mollies in the tank. The started well, but both disappeared during the night. One within a day, the other one within 3 days.

I looks like it is less active, although once it starts moving again, it has the same behaviour. The two crabs in the tank are still alife, one is 1 cm big, the otherone about 2,5-3 cm.
Today I tried to wiggle a piece of thawed shrimp (peeled) on a stick in front of the octopus. Although he did touch it, he didn't do anything with it. Just like the crab and the fish. It must have noticed them (the fish same in front of it, the crabs were surely in its eyesight (which must be great, if I'm not mistaken)), but it totally ignores the food. So I don't think a clawless crab is the option.

Yesterday I also tried a piece of squid (cookec the rest myself, stuffed squid with mushrooms, paprika and pesto. Grilled it, excelent!!). I placed the squid in a glass cup in the tank, so the crabs wouldn't get it. Unfortunatly no succes.

Starting to get a bit demotivated about this one. Colin, where did you get your bimac? Any change getting it in europe?

Oh look, it just got out of it's hiding place. So it does move around again!!
But apparently only in the dark.

How about water quality. It hasn't behaved strangly, except for no interest in food at all, but could it be something to do with wrong values? NO3 is a bit high at this moment (25 mg/l). Any report known for octo's loosing apetite due to waterquality?

Light: I have one TL light burning during the day. Could this be to much for it to be hungry (sounds very strange, but worth to ask).

Another thing, octotanks often have high NO3 values because they eat a lot. I heard that if you add a few ml of wodka (other other etahnol source), you can reduce the NO3 value significantly. Ethanol is used by anaerobic bacteria, which consume NO3 --> N2. If you don't neglect the frequent water change, I do like this method. Has anyone experienced this with octotanks? What I said before, it has been done before with nice results in reeftanks.

Yeah- I'm one of Roy Cadlwell's grad students- finally back on US soil and able to get a reliable internet connection! I've posted an introduction in the Intros forum. Most of my experiences with octopuses have been on their turf rather than with aquaria, although we have kept a decent variety in the lab/at stations over the past few years.

Dont think Id be adding vodka, best idea would be to use some nitrate removing resin or good old fashioned water changes :)

if you fancy a good project why nottry building your own denitrification filter? Quite easy to build and parts are simple :)

Vodka! Haha! :lol:

Alcoholic Octopus? . . :goofysca:
Life could be getting dangerous :jester:

A boundfordetoxtopus? Should I toss that one in socktopuses?


Yeah, yeah...

:tomato:

I was afraid of it.
After not seeing it for a few days, it appeared all strangely curled. A few hours later is lay dead in the tank.
See: http://www.zeewaterforum.net/forums/index.php?board=25;action=display;thread id=7345;view=all


Thanks for your info,

So sorry to hear! I hope you try again! It's deffinately worth it!!

Carol

yeah sorry to hear that.. they always look so messed up dont they?

Well sorry about the bad news. That's ow my last octo looked like when he died. I then decided that cuttles were easier and so stuck with them.