hey all:

After creating a nice little burrow for himself, Tralfaz was out and exploring his new home almost immediately. I was able to get a couple of pics. He has been showing some nice color changes and as you can see from the pics he is clearly O. bimaculoides as the the eyespot is solid (good old jack at fishsupply.com).

What a cute little guy. I'll have to see if he goes after any of the shrimp, crabs or remaining mollies in the tank.

Here is one more pic

George

Excellent! Congrats!

I am hoping to get a new octo by next Saturday! Ordered online from Fish Supply this morning!!!!

Carol :)

Thanks:

Now he is just sitting on a rock looking around like he owns the place!! 8)
when I walk in he just starts flashing colors at me. Cool :D The shrimp in the tank are all still there but they are quite nervous. Instead of being under the rock as usuall they are all on top of it. :twisted:

George

Congrats on a cool octopus!!!!!!

C 8)

Great pictures. Roxy (that's her name for now at least :P ) has been out and exploring too. I work as an educator for the local aquarium where we do sleepovers sometimes. I did one last night and that's when roxy finally came out, while I was gone. My girlfriend watched the whole thing and told me about it. Roxy was even more active this morning before I got back from work. She said that she checked out the whole aquarium, even lifting up the top with one of her arms. I hope she's happy with just sticking her arm out and not the rest of her body. She also inspected all of the filtration equiptment and ripped the thermometer off of the glass! My girlfriend said she did this crazy thing where she walked across the bottom using only 2 arms. Stepping across in a bouncy way on the 2 arms like a man walking on the moon. Has anyone experienced that before? I'm taking some 35mm pics today and I'll get someone to scan then so I can post them.

George- Roxy has ignored the ghost shrimp in my tank too... but she gets any crab that I drop in there pretty quickly.

Hi,
I've had my bimac for several weeks now, and have been in touch with some other bimac owners, and here are a couple of things I've observed:

First of all, young bimacs don't all eat the same thing when they arrive. Maybe they eat what they grew up on. Mine loved amphipods and crabs, had no idea what a clam was for, and liked ghost and salt-water shrimp, but had to learn how to catch them. (He's still learning!) In another case, the bimac loved snails and clams, but ignored the shrimp.

Yes, I've observed the "walking octopus" - very interesting, and I wonder what it means!

For about the last year I've been monitoring whether bimacs escape. At first I heard they never left the tank, but now I know of at least two cases where bimacs escaped and wandered off (both were discovered in time!). So, if your octopus is raising the lid, it's probably time to get out the duck tape!

Looking forward to your pics,
Nancy

Yes, I've observed the "walking octopus" - very interesting, and I wonder what it means!


Maybe I am anthropomorphizing much too much, but if this is a common behavior, I think it would be interesting to observe the Octos from behind a "blind" and see if they do it when people aren't in their sight. What I'm getting at is, whether they are intelligent enough to be consciously imitating the bipedal locomotion of the humans in their lives.

If someone could watch an Octo without being seen, and discover that it will only do the "two-step" when humans are around, IMHO that might indicate some really spectacular degree of intelligence. The "control" could be observation, with an unmanned submersible, of the same species of Octo in the wild. If those individuals never attempt to "walk like a man" (with apologies to Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons :headphon:), that is yet another reason to believe that the "domestic" ones are imitating us.

After all, if a Mimic Octo can "impersonate" several other aquatic critters -- and even a garden-variety Octopus can learn how to open a jar simply by observing another Octopus doing so -- would it be that farfetched to conclude that they are curious enough about their big, odd-looking housemates (i.e., us) to do their own little experiments with walking on two legs?

Feel free to tell me I'm nuts -- but before you do, it might be enlightening to try that experiment with the "blind"! (And if you get ANIMAL PLANET on your cable or satellite system, tune in at 8 p.m. or 11 p.m. Eastern US Time tonight to see "Ultimate Thinkers", which will feature the "soft intelligence" as one of the world's 10 smartest animals.)

Curiouser and curiouser,
Tani the Uncanny

hey all:

LOL Tani, you may be on to something there. Unfortunately, Tralfaz has not decided to do the "two-leg walk" yet. As a matter of fact, I haven't seen hide nor sucker of him since yesterday. I don't plan on panicing just yet. :oops: Hopefully, he is just becoming more secure in his surroundings.

As for food, The shrimp are all still present (though clearly freaked out). I also put in a couple of blue leg hermits and I think that they are all still there. There are several snails in the tank which he has left alone. Yesterday, I saw him perched on top of one but he didn't try to eat it. Hmmmm. Interestingly, yesterday I saw Tralfaz make an attempt on a Mollie (it was a horrible failure - he missed by a mile). Now all of the Mollies are hiding amongst the rock and won't come out. I'm hoping that that Means Tralfaz is active when I'm not in the room. I'll keep you updated.

George

Well Hmmphhh! :x

I just went in the ther room and saw Tralfaz eyeballing me from a cave. I figured that since he does not seem to be eating the other denizens of his tank I would try to feed him some frozen shrimp. (thawed of course)

So I put a piece on a feeding stick and waved it in his face. Well he grabbed it (and the stick, nearly pulling it out of my hand). I thought to myself, yipee he likes it. All of a sudden he sticks his eye out, looks right at me, and flings the piece of shrimp right at the glass where my face is. How Rude!! Lol. So now I know that he doesn't like shrimp of the frozen variety. I figure he isn't starving if he can be so picky. OY VEY!

George

Well:

The mystery is solved. Tralfaz is a hermit crab man. I threw a medium sized on in so it dropped right in front of his cave. It landed upside down and spent a minute or two getting right side up. Tralfaz just watched all of this. As soon as it started walking he pounced. I was holding my camera but was so suprised that I din't take a pic. He dragged it back in his den and seems to be happily eating it.

His "hunting" coloration is interesting. He was almost black except for the bottom inch of his tenticles which were a very light beige. Has anyone seen this before it looks very cool? Anyway, I think I'm getting carpal tunnel from all of these posts. Will update.

Sideways, I'm glad to see that you settled on a name. Hope Roxy is doing well!!! :D

George

TaningiaDanae---I don't think you're crazy, It actually got me thinking... And oh, I watched the top 10 thinkers tonight, yahoo, were #4 :lol:

Lawfish---don't worry about Tralfaz hiding, mine only comes out for my girlfriend(she wasn't so sure at first but I think Roxy's won her heart).
Rox did come out for a couple minutes for me today, I dropped a crab in and she swam over and caught it. I went and got the camera and set it up on the tripod and she hasn't come out sense. :x

Hey all:

Tralfaz has created a little burrow right in the front of the tank. He seems to like sitting in there with just his eyes sticking out watching me.

My question is this, I've noticed that the hermit crab that he caught is still alive and kicking as are all of the snails and shrimp in the tank. Should I declaw the hermit to help him out or try a different type of food? Its only been a couple of days but I want to make sure that he has something to eat! Any advice would be greatly appreciated. :?:

Thanks,

George

Don't bother, he can take em on. you may wanna goto the LFS and get some red claw crabs for him to eat "mine eats about 8 a week." Mine now goes over and grabs snails bringing the smaller ones two or three at a time back to his lair for latter. He's even doing this wierd thing where he sneaks up on the frog/angler fish now from behind grabs it from the back fins and goes for a ride. very odd to watch the fish hates it the octo seems to get a huge kick from it.... he just lets the fish drag him to the other end of the tank and gets off.

Hey Stits:

When you say red claw crabs do you mean fidler crabs??? I'll see if my LFS has any and give it a try. Thanks

George

There sometimes in the same tank... most fiddlers are brackish as well. Red claws can live about two weeks or so in a full salt water tank thats why I go for em over fiddlers.

Hey all:

I fed Tralfaz some astrea snails last night and he seemed to like them. He took the into his burrow so I'm just assuming that he actually ate them. I've seen him make some halfhearted grabs for the shrimp but. . . no luck.

I guess that I'll stick to snails and maybe some rel leg crabs if I can get them at my LFS.

george

Roxy finally figured out what the shrimp in her tank were for. Before she found out, she would let them walk all over her...literally. She was eating two crabs the other day and one was bugging the mess out of her. She finally reached up and yanked it down and shuved it in place with the two crabs. I had over a dozen shrimp in the tank at that time...the next morning I could only find 4!!!

LOL Sideways:

Tralfaz hasn't figured out who is in charge yet. Last night I watched a peppermint shrimp chase him away from a snail he was about to pounce on. How pathetic, some of the shrimp are becoming quite brash with him. I have a feeling that its only a matter of time until he figures out that they are quite tasty! :shock: Until then, Snails it is!
George

Yup, once he figures it out, it"ll be all over for the shrimp! I put a fiddler crab in today while Rox was out. Well the crab landed upside down and didn't move. Roxy just sat there and looked at it. 2 shrimp came down to investigate and started having a tug of war with the upside down crab. Roxy floated over top up them, opened like a parachute and came down on all three of them. The shrimp shot out and she hauled the crab off to her cave. She doesn't go crazy over the shrimp like she does the crab, but when they bug her, she's not afraid to put her foot down... Or all 8 feet down for that matter! :wink:

ps. Rox ate the two periwinkle snails that were in my tank...but I refuse to add any more because the stupid things laid eggs all over my glass.

My octo used to love fiddlers and crayfish. He wouldn't touch the red crabs, but I think it was a matter of preference. Also, the red crabs do seem to last longer in the saltwater.

Hmmm, you are all making me want to do the water changes I have been putting off and get my tank ready for a new bimac. I still have a credit from fishsupply.com for one.


8)

joshsaul...what are you waiting for then?????????
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?????????? :lol:

Hey all:

I found that my LFS carries both ghost shrimp and crayfish. (but very rarely fiddlers but he's going to try to get me some) I gave Tralfaz 5 ghost shrimp last night and today I can't find any of them. Of course they may be hiding. I'm going to wait until the next shipmet of crayfish since the ones in the LFS all seem to be a bit big for Tralfaz. Some of them were almost twice his size.

I watched him stalking a camel shrimp today. Quite pathetic :roll: everytime he would lunge the shrimp easily evaded him. Then it would tap him on the head with its feelers. I'm sure it was doing this to keep track of him but it looked like it was mocking him, you know hitting him on the head and saying "you ain't so tough". Geez, I hope Tralfaz perfects his hunting technique soon, this is getting embaressing. :oops:

George

Hi George,

It's taken Ollie some time to learn how to catch shrimp. Even after I had salt-water shrimp in the tank, I added some ghost shrimp again so he had something to catch easily while he was learning. He came with the ability to catch and eat crabs and snails. Everything else has been a learning experience, even ghost shrimp.

I've noticed that our little bimacs eat different things. You might try fresh (never frozen) scallop - just buy one. (If fact, when you say you have a baby octopus to feed, sometimes you get things for free!) Ollie really likes this, and I give him a just a small piece each day.

Nancy