Hey, I have a tank we set up in the first week in February 120 gallon with trickle filter and chiller keeping it at 65 degrees F. 140 lbs of Utah lace rock, 80 lbs of live sand. On Feb. 12th we added 2 octopi, one larger(9"?) and one smaller(6"?) that were caught off the coast of Santa Barbara. Have been doing well together with the exception of a couple of minor spats. I thought they might be Pacific Giants, but this morning the larger of the two scooped out a nest in the sand and deposited a clutch of eggs at the base of the overflow box under the rocks, eggs appear to be about a centimeter in length and approx. 20-30 of them. The smaller of the two seemed to be doing a happy dance yesterday evening. Since they are sexually mature I am thinking maybe they are another species? I am an experienced professional aquarist but this is my first Octopus aquarium, Any advice or tips would be greatly appreciated. Can you help me identify the species? Advice on eggs? I was thinking that she may have been eggbound already when caught? What is gestation period and appropriate foods for hatchlings?

Thank You in Advance,

Tim

Good golly--they look like bimacs

You know this means there might be some tank raised bimacs in our future!

Dan

WOOOHOOOO!!!!!

Beautiful!!!

Hi Tim and welcome to TONMO.com!:welcome:

These are beautiful octopuses (are the pics ony of the smaller one?). However, I don't think they're bimacs because I can't see any eyespot. They look something like young O. rubescens. We now have a forum under Ceph Science for IDs, so please post your pics there with a short description (size, where they were found, size of eggs, etc.)

If you click on Articles above, and then on Ceph Care, you find a list of articles on keeping cephs. The ones on octopuses should interest you.

The length of time for the eggs to hatch depends on the species and water temperature - it might be 6 weeks. These are large eggs so you'd have a chance of raising them. They need small prey, such as mysid shrimp and amphipods, if you want to give it a try.

Do they have names? I'd like to post them in the List of Our Octopuses
at the top of this forum.

Nancy

The eyespots might be hidden behind the curled tentacle in the middle picture, perhaps? It does look awfully red though. Let a man have hope, Nancy :)

Dan

Octos are hard to identify - so yes, there's always hope.

I think we'll find a way to have bimacs again.:smile:

Nancy

wow, you all are pretty active on the board, The tank is at a client/friends office so I don't get to study them at will. But am finding them to be even more fascinating than I had expected and am debating on keeping one personally. This site is going to be a big help, thank you. Here are a few more pics. Names are Ophelia and Oscar although they are now being reversed since the big one is a female. Yes the pictures are only of the small one(now Oscar) but they are the same species. The big one(now Ophelia) has not been as photo friendly(maybe brooding?).

Tim

Great pics!!!! The eggs in O. Rubescens are 3-4mm long, so a small egg species, which means they would be hard to rear(planktonic). If you have access to rotifers or perhaps a plankton net with an ocean nearby you could give it a go.

I think I'll put my money on it being O. digueti, I can't see the little spikes on the eyes (O. Rubescens), and "spots and bumpy skin" seem like a good description based on the pics(go Cephalopods a world guide go!). :grin:
Are there two flaps under the eyes Viciousfishes? I cant quite make it out?
If this is the case your chances of raising them are much better - the young will be benthic , making it much easier to feed them. Lots of pods ect will be good. Try and see how big the eggs are too, that will help confirm what species you have.
Good luck with it. :grin:

i will have yalls access to the dried copopod and amphipod eggs here pretty soon when i do ill post the web adress for my friends store and you can order them through him

Hi Tim,

The consensus seems to be that you've either got O. rubescens or O. digueti. I'm not knowledgeable enough to speculate but here are a couple of picture galleries that might help you:

This one is O. rubescens
http://www.cephbase.utmb.edu/imgdb/imgsrch2.cfm?PhotographerID=&CephID=582&Location=&Keywords=&LowestTaxa=

And this is O. digueti
http://www.cephbase.utmb.edu/imgdb/imgsrch2.cfm?PhotographerID=&CephID=522&Location=&Keywords=&LowestTaxa=

These galleries include pictures of both the animals and of their developing eggs.

FWIW: Your pictures do appear to be of a male octo. In the center picture in your original post (Octopus2.jpg) the arm that is pointing directly to the left seems to be different than the others - that's indicative of a male since they have one specialized arm for sperm transfer.

It's possible that the "spats" that you witnessed were actually the two octos mating. The fact that one is significantly larger than the other but that both survived the encounter reinforces that idea.

If you're not familiar with the octopus life cycle it might be worth pointing out that these two animals are almost certainly going to die soon. That's the natural way of things. Depending on species, an octopus grows to breeding size/age in 6 to 36 months (more or less) and dies after reproducing. You might want to warn your client!

BTW: Those were excellent pictures! I'm sure everyone wishes you the best of luck and hopes that you'll keep us informed about how things are going.

Reproductively yours,

Alex

Thanks for the links, I'm pretty sure that we have O. digueti after comparing the pics. Are these the ones that are easier to raise to adulthood? Any tips? should the eggs, or babies, or parents be removed from the tank? We are all aware of the short life cycle but were just getting attached to these two and had hoped to know them a bit longer :( oh well such is life...

Thanks for the links, I'm pretty sure that we have O. digueti after comparing the pics. Are these the ones that are easier to raise to adulthood?

That means your in luck!!!! These are so called big egg species - when the eggs hatch a "fully" formed mini octopus will pop out, and carry on just as normal.

Small egg species on the otherhand have planktonic larvae, making them pretty much impossible without very intense care- kinda like raising clownfish, but much harder. :shock:

Here's a link to Cephjedi's log on raising some eggs.... http://www.jimbolouislabs.com/eggjournal.htm

And here a good bit of info Dan found from the now closed octopets.... Octopet Egg Festoon

Octopus eggs are difficult, take a lot of time and care to hatch, and once hatched they require live feed. Octopus will not eat dead food until they are older and they do not survive on brine shrimp. I recommend that only the most serious and experienced marine hobbyist attempt to rear an octopus from the egg.

Now If the warning didn’t scare you off, let me tell you how to hatch and care for octopus eggs.

1. Water quality needs to be high, see Octopus info for water quality guidelines.

2. Attach egg festoon to a piece of Styrofoam with fishing line or rubber band, so eggs stay off the bottom and sides of tank.

3. IMPORTANT! KEEP EGGS CLEAN! Gentle aeration under or near eggs, so eggs move just enough to
rub against each other, this helps to keep the eggs clean. Gently rubbing the eggs between your fingers
everyday will also help keep the eggs clean. In nature, the female octopus spends all her time rubbing
every egg of her brood, between 400-700 eggs. She even stops eating and never leaves her
den. Dirty eggs lose the ability to transfer oxygen through the egg wall and will not hatch.

4. Water temperature effects hatch time; the warmer the faster they hatch.

5. The closer to hatching the smaller the yolk sac gets and you will be able to see the baby octopus through
the egg wall. Be very careful with aeration and rubbing eggs when the yolk sac is less than half the size
of the entire egg. When the yolk is the size of a BB (Copper BB gun ammo) or you get any eggs
hatching prematurely, you should stop handling the eggs, premature hatchlings tend not to survive.

6. LIVE FEED! Have your live feed ready for the day the octopus hatch, amphipods , mysids, copepods and
pretty much anything live and small enough for them to handle. Feed 2-3 pods/day/octopus, keep the
area the octopus live as small as possible and as shallow as possible, this helps them catch food because
the food has less space to escape. Always have live food in the octopus tank, so they won’t eat each
other!

7. OCTOPUS DENS, start with ½ inch pvc pipe pieces, always have more dens than you do octopus, so the
octopus don’t fight over them. As the octopus grow and fill their dens you need to put in larger and
larger pipe sizes. They prefer pipes with a cap on one end and half a cap on the other end.

8. The bigger the octopus gets the bigger the live feed, so this gives you more choices for feed. Small
clams, small crabs, snails, worms anything you think the octopus are big enough to catch, eat and won’t
be eaten themselves

It will be interesting to see how it goes :grin:

They sure don't resemble digueti, and they are out of the natural range...of course, they could be transfers, or abnormals...hey, it does happen.
Adult digueti are about 8" in diameter, spread out...more miniature than miniature

viciousfishes : can you see "two flaps below the eyes" on the octopus? This apparantly is one of the ways to distinguish between the two species.
I only just worked out where Santabarbara was, it does seem a wee bit out, but who knows.

The only place I have been able to find them is in the northern straights of the Sea of Cortez...but, it is conceivable that they could make it, or be transferred to, S.B.
In the photos, they look waaaaay to big to be digueti, though...our adults can fit into a shot glass.

These two are way to big to fit in a shot glass. I wasn't able to get a good look at them on Friday when I serviced the tank, but I did find that she has a lot more eggs attached up under the rocks in her cave. Probably 100-200 eggs and the eggs are about the size of a grain of rice if that helps with ID'ing. The digueti pics resemble these two the most from what I have been able to see so far. Although they do sometimes have some red coloration in them. Also in looking at the pics of O. rubescens I saw that some of the pictures were taken at the Channel Islands which is basically where these two came from. So maybe that points more in the direction of these being O. rubescens. In that case, do they still hatch out to be full baby octopuses? That would eat copepods and amphipods etc.?

Sounds like O rubescens from the egg size, when they hatch you might want to switch/slow down the flow or they'll get skimmed!

To confirm have a look at these pics...
http://www.cephbase.utmb.edu/imgdb/images/Cb0600.jpg
The middle egg is O. digueti, and the bottom egg is what O. rubescens eggs would be like. Unfortunately - there isnt a scale on the pic.


here is a pic of rubescens eggs. http://www.cephbase.utmb.edu/imgdb/images/Cb0013.jpg

Well,

here is a pic of rubescens eggs.
These look like the eggs we have.... so now what?

Tim

Here are some O. rubescens pics from the NRCC

The best thing I'd suggest is feeding lots of pods ect into the tank when they hatch. Perhaps even baby brine shrimp(better than nothing). If you have a plankton net you could go trawling, and empty that into the tank too.
Perhaps someone else has more ideas?
Just make sure you turn off the skimmer when they hatch. There isnt that much hope for them unfortunately given that they will be so small. You never know though. :grin:

Ok, so now we are pretty sure it is O. rubescens that we are dealing with, "There isnt that much hope for them unfortunately given that they will be so small. You never know though. " by Feelers, is this pretty much the consensus? Has anyone been successfull in this?

Thanks

Hi Tim,

IMHO, it just isn't feasible to raise "small egg" octopus babies at
home. Small egg species have been raised in artificial environments
but, to my knowledge, the success stories always come from
institutions that are able to devote the necessary time and resources
to the task. I'm pretty sure, for example, that the Seattle Aquarium
has raised GPO's from eggs but I'm also sure that they don't try to
replenish their display animals through captive breeding - it's just
too much work!

Here's some of what you're up against:

1. The eggs will hatch into very small, weakly swimming babies. In a
normal tank these will almost certainly be destroyed, damaged, or
trapped by the whatever water circulation system you use. The normal
way around this is to have a Kriesel tank ready and transfer the
babies to it immediately.

2. Baby octos are proportionally just as hungry as adults (maybe even
more so) but because of their small size they are very limited in what
they can capture at first. You'll have to provide copepods or similar
sized zooplankton for the period that the baby octos remain as free
swimmers. Copepod culture is fairly straight forward but it's also
fairly labor intensive.

3. Assuming they survive the planktonic stage they will quickly
outgrow zooplankton as food and you'll have to be ready with something
slightly larger such as amphipods or small shrimp. These are probably
easier to culture than copepods from a technical standpoint but they
have another set of problems. Because they grow far more slowly than
copepods you'll have to devote a lot of space to amphipod culture in
order to have a sufficient supply during the period that your young
octos are eating them.

4. They will also outgrow amphipods and, from what I've read, O.
rubescens will then move on to small snails or hermits. It isn't
practical to culture or collect this sort of thing but possibly you
could substitute an equivalent size shrimp.

5. At every stage, your baby octos will be more than happy to eat each
other if there isn't other food in sufficient quantities. In fact,
there is a school of thought that says cephs actually prefer other
cephs as food. That boils down to putting a priority on separating the
babies as quickly as possible. Obviously, it wouldn't be possible, let
alone practical, to have a separate space for each of several hundred
babies but you should be aware that you'll be lucky to get one
maturing octo from each enclosure that you do construct.

6. These things are, of course, in addition to the 'normal' problems
of keeping a ceph with their high metabolism and messy eating habits.

A couple of final comments about O. rubescens. First, be careful about
handling these guys - they are biters and their bite can be fairly
serious. Second, they have a reputation for being escape artists, even
compared to other species of octo. Roy Caldwell, who posts here with
the screen name Neogondylactus (sp?) says this may be because O.
rubescens is often found intertidally which indicates it isn't very
concerned about climbing out of the water.

Sorry if this comes across as being too negative but the things I
mentioned are realistic concerns for a prospective octopus nursery.

Discouragingly yours,

Alex

Thank You for the info Alex, I will not be able to devote that much time and energy, especially if the outcome will likely be the same either way.:cry: For one thing the tank is located in someone elses office. What are some thoughts on valving the pump waaayy down and putting in some live rock and a bunch of copepods and amphipods and letting Nature take its course, We had also added 4 peppermint shrimp( as food for the octopuses) right before the eggs were laid, two of the shrimp are carrying eggs which may provide another food source. Should I be concerned about the Adult shrimp eating the baby octo's?

Maybe you could release them near where you caught the adults and hope they make it?

I've thought about that but am a good 3 hour drive from Santa Barbara (Palm Springs Area). But that might be an option... Would love to see some make it though, I've even been toying with the idea of putting a good lid on my personal 225 gallon reef tank that has a permanent glass divider at the 1/3 mark. Just not sure that I want to deal with the extra wastes of a messy eating octopus in the same water as the other tank inhabitants.

Check out this source of live food - they have all sizes and many of us have ordered from this site before.


http://www.aquaculturestore.com/products.html

Look under Salt Water Inverts.

Nancy

Thanks Nancy,

I think I will need to talk to the tank owner and decide what to do, I think he is going to want to try and raise them...

Tim

Well, the tank owner wants to make a go of it and the good news is that I had added a few pieces of live rock and macroalgae to the tank about a week and half ago and now there are all sorts of pods in varying sizes spreading like mad about the tank, would anyone suggest raising the temp in the tank? We are currently holding at 65 F. the parents have stopped eating:( and are being very reclusive, one of the peppermint shrimp has taken up residence right next to them.

Here is a quick update and some pics. eggs hatched yesterday and tank is full of babies. As soon as we had the eggs I stopped cleaning the glass and the tank is now loaded with various pods etc. in all sizes babies are now eating well. I have a lot of reef tanks with refugiums and so have access to lots more pods, also about a week ago we had a large hatching of peppermint shrimp in the tank and that's when I slowed the flow waaaay down and have blocked the overflow teeth with pieces of window weatherstripping so that the water just oozes into the overflow and babies don't go over the edge. Just wondering how long we can expect the mom to live? When the dad died he came out of hiding and put on a spectacular display, (was caught on video) Can we expect the same from the mother? My big concern is that with the flow turned down so far if she dies in her lair we may not catch it in time to remove her before she pollutes the tank.(we cannot even see her in her lair, just the occasional arm which by the way she used to push the babies out.) We are crossing our fingers on this ;)

Ahhh...Hatchlings are sooo adorable! Good luck with them! Sounds like you have an excellent viable plan!

Carol

I've read that ocotpuses come out of their dens when it's time to go, which is backed up by our TONMO experiences. I don't know whether that's true in all cases, or just most of the time, but it's unlikely that your octo will die in her den.

Nancy

Thanks Nancy! That's great news!

Tim

Here are some more pics. Starting to get some pigment, seem to be eating and doing well at this point.

Ahhh....They seem to be doing really well!

How many to you estimate you have??? That's a lot of mouths (beaks) to feed. :shock:

holy crap thats a lot of octos

It is with a heavy heart that I post today, I have needed to calm down... On Tuesday I found out that my well-meaning and excited customer was apparently anxious that the babies would have food over the weekend and decided to put several pieces of silversides and krill into the aquarium for the babies to nibble on (I guess with the idea that since that was what we had been feeding the parents maybe these tiny babies would eat it as well...) ?!?! I had thought we were all clear about what the babies were eating... Needless to say, with the flow turned so far down, the dead fish and shrimp quickly started to break down and caused an ammonia surge which killed everything. Hopefully this can be a learning experience and will not be repeated. FWIW I do feel that there was a very good chance at success in this endeavor.

With Regrets,

Tim

:sad: very sorry to hear this Tim! My condolences.

So sorry to hear this. :sad: We've been encouraged by your success and hope you get the opportunity to try again.

People don't understand how fragile these saltwater environments are and how easy it is to make a mistake.

Nancy

Sorry to hear about the little ones...:sad: