Hi

Im a relatively experianced marine fish keeper & enjoy the more unusual species, e.g. seahorses, eels etc. The other day I visited my lfs & saw the most stunning octopus - it was probably very silly of me as I know nothing about these creatures but I couldnt resist. I chatted to the owner of the lfs (very knowledgable & trustable guy) to find out whether I would be able to house the cute fella. He said that he was fully grown & ate crustaceans (I live by the sea so should be able to get a regular supply of live crabs) - it all sounded fairly simple & so I took the plunge.

I have put him in a tank of his own with a deep sand bed and live rock (there are a couple of button polyps growing on the rock but I assume this wont hurt him). There is a sump attached to this tank.

It has a lid and just a standard floro light unit so I think the set up is ok for him from what I have read.

However when I have looked up details of his species it appears he is a mimic octopus which everyone seems to warn against & now Im worrying that Ive made a big mistake by bringing him home. :sad:

Any advice would be appreciated.

First of all, :welcome: to Tonmo...glad you found us, even if a little belatedly...ah well.
Yeah, it is too bad that these animals are imported...if it is an adult, you probably will only have it for a month or so, so trying to do something with it at this point is somewhat moot...
I would recommend documenting as much as you can about this relatively unknown animal, there are a few people on Tonmo who are interested in this species, and any info would probably be appreciated by them, even small details.
Best of luck,
greg

What sort of info are they looking for?

Also heres a pic.

Hi and welcome to TONMO.com! :welcome:

Well, the bad thing is someone capturing them and selling them to the pet trade, and also that they're adults and won't live very long.

But, now that you have your mimic octo, just try to take as good care of him as possible. See if you can't get information about this species from observation. (Hiding or out in the open, favorite food, interaction with you, etc.) Take lots of pics for us, and document this octopus's behavior. A lot of us are interested!

Nancy

He spends most of his time out in the open on the tank glass - is this normal?. I expected him to hide in the live rock or even burrow in the sand.

:welcome: What an amazing animal! Do you have more pics? Has he eaten for you? You mentioned you can collect your own food. Where are you located?



Carol

Hi

I live in Weston super Mare which is a seaside town in the UK. Within about 1 minute of introducing him to my aquarium he climbed onto a frozen cockle in its shell & cracked it open :smile:

Ive also put a couple of crabs in there from one of my other marine aquariums - an expensive way to feed him but thought it would do to keep him happy until I get a chance to go to the beach at the weekend and get some free crabs :lol:

I will take some more pics - may try to do some videoing also as he does some weird stuff - such as his stripes seem to 'pulse' over his face in a kind of a wave of colour :rainbow:

He tends to sit on the glass either all bunched up as a blob or fully extended like a starfish. He likes to crawl around the glass but also sometimes goes for a swim in the middle of the tank in the middle of the water column where he shows off his long legs.

Does this all seem good behavior for an octo?

BTW if you look at the picture I posted previously you can see him sat on top of a cockle.

Hi big red and welcome to tonmo.com, i stay north of the border...

well, here's some news; its not a mimic! It is wunderpus by the looks of the picture... everthing that has been said above about mimic is also true of the wunderpus. With one main exception, which is that they reckon its venemous so please watch your fingers!

It seems that they can be a fairly shy species and you should add as many caves and food grade quality plastic pipes as you can as hiding places.

please take as many pics and videos as you can and post them here. I hope you dont feel too bad about buying this species and i hope that it lives longer than the worst case secenario.

cheers
Colin

Some more pics

& more :grin:

he looks cool Big Red

BTW how big is the tank he's in an what temp you runnin at?

nice one

Typical behaviour for wunderpus and the mimic is to bury in the sand and only emerge to feed at dusk and dawn. As for whether they are venomous or not, who knows. There are no data either way that I am aware of. We have some prey that were killed by wonderpus and then immediately frozen, but chemical analysis won't be run until next summer. We are not sure there will be sufficient material to show anything, but it is worth a shot.

Roy

Hmmm...neat looking octo...hope we can learn more about them...can you imagine a captive breeding program in the future? That would be something else...
greg

To update you all, Ive now had him just over a month & he seems to be doing well.
He occasionally hides under the rocks but still spends most of his time out in the open. He seems to prefer it high up in the tank on the glass just under the water line. When hes asleep he bunches up into a blob & goes very pale but his colour resumes as he wakes. He get the odd crab for a treat but still happily eats the frozen cockle. Id been advised that he needs mental stimulation so have put some toys in there (e.g. a darth vadar figure) & lots of tubing. I also tried putting his food in a jar with the lid done up but to date he hasnt worked out how to open it. The lfs that sold him to me advised me that he handled him several times in the shop & as he was coming round my house to help me with a different tank he showed me this. He put his hand in and within 2 seconds my octopus climbed on him for a nose. After a few mins he got bored and let go. So in that case I have another question - If he is poisonous how would he poison you? I assume it would be only if he felt threatened?. He is very bold and doesnt worry at all if you need to go in the tank to do any sort of maintenance etc.

Last night I put his food in a mayonaise jar (obviously washed out) and did up the lid just tight enough so that it couldnt be knocked off & would have to be turned. This morning I checked & he had opened it. Im a very proud mum!

It's really nice to hear that he's progressing fine, and what lovely photos i might say.

The octo would have to feel threatened or mistake you for food if it were to bite. But normally if it's threatened it'll resort to a few other tactics first.

Your octopus can't bite you unless it's in a position where its beak makes contact with your skin. It's usually possible to avoid finding yourself in that position by keeping your hand above or to the side of the octopus.

They do sometimes give you a little nip out of curiosity, but you have to let them envelop your hand, for instance.

Nancy

Nancy Wrote:-

They do sometimes give you a little nip out of curiosity, but you have to let them envelop your hand, for instance.

Did this happen to you with Ollie Nancy??

Megas keeps trying that. Pull your hand in and then try to cover it with his whole body. KNEW he was trying to eat me.
grats on keeping that mimic going he looks kewl
spooky but kewl

Hi Scouse,

Not exactly to me, but to my husband Bill, who was fixing something in the tank. She was not very old - I had kept her about 3 months when this happened. Bill knew what she was doing - Colin told us about this behavior, so Bill decided to let her explore his hand and bite him if she wanted to.

She took a little nibble, waited, then another - and she never tried it again with either of us after that. While it was happening, Bill said "Nancy, Ollie is biting me!." I replied "Oh, no, she couldn't be biting you!". I was wrong, of course and took pics of the little bites afterwards. Here they are (so small you can barely see them - it's the little dot between the fingers).

We have learned a lot through these years on Tonmo - the current belief at the time was that bimacs never bit and never escaped. Both are untrue.

Nancy

She took a little nibble, waited, then another - and she never tried it again with either of us after that. While it was happening, Bill said "Nancy, Ollie is biting me!." I replied "Oh, no, she couldn't be biting you!". I was wrong, of course and took pics of the little bites afterwards. Here they are (so small you can barely see them - it's the little dot between the fingers).

Well, acording to some canibal tribes, we taste like pork, so I would imagine that we would not be very apealing to any ceph. Once she got a taste, I'm sure her opinion became "fun to play with, but not very good eating" :wink:

-Jared

One more note on octo bites: I'd like to add that there is a risk of infection or allergic reaction with an octopus bite - I've never encountered anyone who suffered either of these outcomes from an octo bite, but both are possible and you need to be aware of it.

The amount of venom (and the pain from the bite) varies from species to species - we know it's not much in the case of a bimac. I'd be more cautious with lesser known species such as wunderpus or the mimic.

Nancy

your wunderpus is a female.

The guy from the lfs did let the octo envelop his hand so I suppose he was at risk of being bit then. How do you handle it without this happening?

This is going to sound really stupid but I cant work out exactly where its beak is :oops:

Muctopus how on earth can u tell its female?

hi Nancy,

Thats quite mad thanks for sharing. Very couragous of Bill!! I suppose in light of him not being injected with venom it could be compared to a nasty bite from a budgy or cockatail thats broke the skin.

I think it was good to afford Ollie the opportunity to do this at a younger age as opposed to letting him grow large and then try it... :shock:


Big Red wrote :- Muctopus how on earth can u tell its female?

I think its the stripy tights (pantyhose) that was the clue :lol:

A while ago I posted how to tell if your octopus is a male or female:

http://www.tonmo.com/forums/showthread.php?p=22714#post22714

That post was for a different kind of octopus- male wunderpus don't have enlarged suckers.

It's easy to sex wunderpus because the male's mating arm (hectocotylus) is so much shorter than the others (drawing of whole animal is wunderpus).

Also- you shouldn't have to worry about how to handle the wunderpus because you shouldn't handle them anyway. To do so can stress the animal so easily that you're putting her (not just yourself) at risk. Just use a dip net if for some reason you really need to move it.

Wunderpus lives on open sand plains (very few rocks, etc.). When your female crawls around, she's probably looking for an open (deep) patch of sand in which to dig a hole (and possibly lay eggs). If she doesn't find one, then she'll probably stress and keep pacing rather than go in a rock. I've seen one wunderpus (juvenile) hole up in a curved PVC tube, so that might be an option if you aren't able to put a sand bed in your tank.

Fantastic photos.

Pity this is such an endangered species. If these personality traits are common to most individuals of the species when in captivity, perhaps they could be captive bred and become a competitor to the Bimacs.

I can't stop looking at your photos. Some video would really be something.

It's too much to hope for but it would be great if it is a she and she mated just before being caught.....

Wunderpus lay small eggs, and the hatchlings have a (likely) 1-2 month planktonic phase. Although many people have put in years of effort and thousands of dollars trying to rear small-egged octopuses like O.vulgaris and O.cyanea, only a few people have been successful(Igleseas et al. Aquaculture International 12: 481–487, 2004.). One day it will be possible to culture wunderpus (but to be totally honest, bimacs make much better pets). In the meantime, if the female lays fertile eggs, sadly that generation will die a few days after hatching.

On a brighter note, you can find some short clips of wunderpus in the wild on:
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~chuffard/index_files/Cast.htm
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~chuffard/index_files/VIDEO.htm

Cool video clip. Mine moves around like that. Ive also seen him do the eye pulsing stripe thingy - do all octopuses do this?

mucktopus wrote:-

In the meantime, if the female lays fertile eggs, sadly that generation will die a few days after hatching.

eh :?: how come :?:

just too difficult to rear Scouse... almost impossible to recreate conditions

Muck,

Thanks for the links!

I don't have access to Aquaculture International. Did they publish specifics on the envionment and technique used to culture the young?

Colin Wrote:-

just too difficult to rear Scouse... almost impossible to recreate conditions

Cheers mate, out of intrest more than anything what conditions would you be tryin to recreate if that doesnt sound too daft :bonk: