Spike is doing wonderfully. Been 9 days. He is nosey. I have always drummed my fingers on the outside of the tank of any octopus that I have had from Day 1 just so he knows it's me. Well his new thing is when he hears the drumming he has to peak and see what I'm up to from whereever he happens to be in the tank. Plus if he's close enough he will try to touch my fingers. Today I found him in about 20 different spots. There are times I'm looking for him and until I drum my fingers, I can't find him as he's so blended. All the snails are almost gone and he's graduated to crabs that are about the same size as him. No clear pics to post as of yet. He is a little shy, but is deffinately getting very curious!

I've had Blinky for about 12 days, but she continues to remain the the same den, only venturing out at night for brief moments to catch crabs. I only have 2 crabs left. I bought a bag of Uncooked shrimp with the shell on. She didn't eat any, but she had just eaten a crab the night before. Will the legs and carapace shell foul the water? They don't seem to deteriorate, or decay or anything. I think it'd be cool to leave them all there to show how many crabs she had killed.

When I come near, she does poke her eyes out to see what i'm doing lol. I think she's either shy, or something's wrong...

If she pokes her eye(s) out to see you, she's probably fine. Octopuses have different personalities, some bolder, some more shy.

You might order a shipment of fiddlers from The Aquaculture Store.
http://www.aquaculturestore.com/products.html
Some octopuses take longer than others to get acclimated to dead food. All will take live.

Nancy

I've had Sla'neesh for almost a week now and he seems to be doing fine. He appears to have settled into a medium conch shell. I havn't noticed any snails missing but all of the small hermits I had in there gone. All 6 shells are piled outside his den. I have seen him take down 2 of the crabs that Zyan sent with him,they're the same size as he is!! He seems to be getting used to us since he doesn't pull all the way into his den when we approach. I havn't tried handling him yet,figure I'll give him a few more days. I'll post some pics when I can.

I have had Stretch for over a month now,and he is doing great.He is on a steady diet of crabs and snails.I tried squid and krill but he doesnt seem to like them much.I am going to get some silver sides or sand eels next week and try those,I will try to get some pics up next week as well.
Steve

Blinky ate her first raw shrimp tonight! She ate the whole thing too...

I've had my two bimacs from zyan almost a month now and their both doing great. They're eating crabs,snails and even shellless frozen shrimp.For the last week or so I've been feeding them the shrimp straight from my hand.They do have there own personalitys because one of them is out all the time , and the other one is a little more shy. but not like some of the others I've herd about. Like I said there both eating right out my hands.

Well Sla'neesh has been with us for over a month now and I'd have to say he's made himself at home. He spends about half the day just hanging out on the front of his tank watching us. In fact when Jordy (my daughter) walks up to his tank he swims up and sits on the wall directly in front of her. He's at least doubled his size since we got him,is a great eater,and extremely social.
Heres a quick video of him getting a fiddler. This was the first time I used a jar.
For anyone interested this is the same way I introduced Vigo to jars n she eventually learned to take a lid off. We'll see if Sla'neesh can learn it too.

http://s102.photobucket.com/albums/m91/caz2022/?action=view&current=DCFC0001-1.flv?t=1169409142

He sounds like Spike. Have you let him touch you yet? It's been really interesting the different personalities on all the babies.

He sounds like Spike. Have you let him touch you yet? It's been really interesting the different personalities on all the babies.

As a matter of fact, I was setting up a floating toy for him today and he "jumped" on my thumb. I could feel him "tasting" my thumb but he never bit. I did get a nice squirt of water when I raised my hand too close to the surface.
Since I set up his toy, he's played with it several times. I post a pic next time he climbs on.

Cool!!! Spike had my hand for a good ten minutes. Freaked me a little. I had put a large green lego in with him, but I think he got spooked after it was in there for while as he inked 3 times in a day, but since I removed it, he's been fine. Also tonight I defrosted the frozen prawn petshops sell, and he was all over it, even taking the serpentstars share right out of the poor things mouth!

I got Gir and Dib from Zyan
I keep them in a 150 gal tank
Gir is out going and agressive while Dib hides in the castle most of the time
have been some entaglements but nothing serious
just one roaming looking for something to eat and bump into the other one.
Hopefully if i keep them well fed and happy they wont eat eachother

So far these are the bimac siblings from zyan silver:

Mizu Gir and Dib (2 bimacs)
DHyslop Sleipner
seeveboo Stretch
corw314 Spike
Brock Fluharty Blinky
caz2022 Sla'nesh
octo joe 2 bimacs

Please correct me if there are any errors, and if there are more siblings out there, please report in!

Nancy

Here are a few more pics of Sla'neesh. He's playing on his new toy.

We all love photos of octopuses playing with their toys! Looks like Sla'neesh is having fun.:smile:

Nancy

Well I guess Sla'neesh doesn't like roommates. I was at the LFS buying some fiddlers and noticed that they had Mollies on sale for $.99. I picked up two of them (2-3"s long) and aclimated them to saltwater. I gave Sla'neesh three of his fiddlers and introduced the Mollies about an hour later. At first he didn't seem to mind them at all. They swam around and seemed to be enjoying there new home. When I checked about a week later there was one missing. While watching TV last night I caught a glimpse of Sla'neesh motoring around the tank chasing the remaining Molly. This morning it was gone. While I plan on keeping Sla'neesh on a fiddler/krill diet does anyone see any issues if I toss in a couple Mollies once in a while for "sport"?

Well, you really shouldn't feed FW to SW. I don't remember exactly what it does, but it can eventually kill them. I'm not an expert though...very far from it.

variety is the spice of life. i think what you've done is fine.
zy

i have had my octo davey for almost two months and hes starting to eat things out of my hands like crabs it so cool lol

Is Davey one of Zyans? How much has he grown since you received him? Does he play with any toys offered?

Today, Jess and I are hitting Toys R Us baby section and hope to come home with some different toy options for Spike. He too now comes up to the waterline for his shrimp. Funny to see these legs coming out of the water grasping at anything he can get his legs on. I'm not brave enough to let him "catch" me again!:smile:

Blinky isn't very active at all. She hides in this cheesy octopus figuring that I got at Wal*Mart, and only comes out when I wave a frozen shrimp in front of the hole. I have legos, baby toys, live rock, and marvles in rhere for her, but she doesn't play with them. I took her den and checked it for eggs when she was out eating one day and nothing. Parameters are fine, but I think it may have been because i've been feeding her frozen shrimp for 2 weeks straight. maybe dead food alone isn't enough to keep her energy up? I'm going to the LFS today, ad I can get some FW fiddlers, but my SW fiddler supplier is out of the question. it's been gettig down tin the negatives here at night. We were out of school all this week due to bad blizzards. Thankfully, no power outages to speak of. I'm crossing my fingers and holding my breath as another "Arctic Blast" pummels through the East Coast.

i dont know what kind of octo he is cause hes always changing hes color to black with a white stripe to a multi color with like spinyes but yeah he has gottin a little bigger since i got him when i first bought him i got like 30 ghost shrimp and i had a clown and i put frozen food in the water for him and davey ended up eating it untill the ghosts got to close then bang he started eating them lol and i notice they were dissapering so when he got down to the last one i tryed the frozen stuff and he would come up the the top of the tank and take it from me then i got a crab and tryed it and he like them alot lol

i havent tryed toys yet but i had two little PVC pipe but took it out it was not big enough and i have pics i will take to show my tank its not the best cause i havent really put alot of money into it lol

I have just recieved 2 Bimac's from Zyan i am keeping them both in a 75gallon tank with a 20 gallon sump i will be buying a chiller for these guys and keeping them at 65-66 i will start a new post with pic's.Let everyone know how they interact togther they both ate last night and made a big mess crab parts every where:lol:

3 months and 1 week since Spikes arrival. He continues to grow at an amazing rate. He's too big for his shell any more so he hangs outside it, perched between the shell and a large piece of coral. I got worried yesterday as his new place to sleep is up by the waterline, so I tested my parameters and did a water change last night. I bought a new protein skimmer over the weekend so that is the project for this weekend.

I'd like to hear how the other babies are doing. Are they social? How is their growth rate? What are they eating and do they look for food daily? Any new pics?

Lost GIR
Literally lost him. No Body. No Corpse nothing. watied 2 months since they can hide. there is no sign of him.
Dib is fine and eating and growing
Its too bad Gir was the explorer and always just OUT sleeping where you could see him
Dib is the recluse. doesnt come out unless hes hungry

Sla'neesh is doing great. He's more than tripled in size since he arrived.
He's very social. I think he has a crush on my daughter. Any time she walks by the tank, he swims directly to where she is. My camera is down right now but I'll post some pics as soon as possible
It's a great day today!! Sla'neesh actually chose some raw shrimp over a fiddler crab. I'm thinking that will save the checkbook a bit. Now I only have to toss in a couple crabs a month to change his diet some.

Well...if all our babies hatched on August 8, that makes them 8 months old. I love the way they all have no fear of us. I hope we all have them well past a year. Spike hardly hides at all any more unless he's tired of the camera. He sleeps out in the open. Never had an octopus do that before. I think he's just plain nosy and when he knows I'm home or sleeping, just doesn't want to take the chance on missing anything. He eats a crab a day with a 3 to 4" shell. I have been purchasing a dozen crabs every 12 days from the local bait shop. And he doesn't care if it's dead, alive, defrosted as long as it's food. Reminds me of that creature from Rocky Horror Picture Show....FEED ME..........

Lost GIR
Literally lost him. No Body. No Corpse nothing. watied 2 months since they can hide. there is no sign of him.
Dib is fine and eating and growing
Its too bad Gir was the explorer and always just OUT sleeping where you could see him
Dib is the recluse. doesnt come out unless hes hungry

Dare I suggest that Dib, may have had a LARGE meal? Cannibalism isn't too unusual in cephs.

J

Sla'neesh is THE MAN!!!!!!!!!!! Before anyone gets mad at me this was NOT planned. I picked up some LR from a "friend" and ended up getting a 3" mantis in the process. The fight broke out before I knew about the hitchhicker. I'll admit I panicked (specially after seeing that Blue ring/Mantis video) but Sla'neesh kicked ass!!! Not to sound too heartless but Im "proud as a peacock" over my boy right now! My "friend" is MORE than likely going to get a bit of an asskicking as well. I only wish my camera was close enough to document the battle.

well that is one of the recommended ways to rid your live rock of these uninvited mantis shrimp. like i said before- trained assassins. way cool. zy

Yeah that was my thought but the whole thing ?
Gir was kinda big...
any way moot point
Dib died last night
was eating...then stopped...then was eating again...then stopped.
Strange critters. cant seem to figure out why they do what they do.
Dib was always reclusive. Gir was always in the open. I guess when they spread it out like that survival will favor ONE of them.
RIP Dib..and Belatedly Gir

gregor, sorry to hear about the deaths. zy

RIP Dib :angelpus: RIP Gir :angelpus:

J

:sad:

:sad: Rip little octo's....:angelpus:

Hello all,
I finally got time to give an update and post some pics. Stretch is doing great,I have been feeding him every other day with frozen shrimp,clams, muscles, and crabs.I like to watch him splitting clams open and dragging them back to his den.Here are some pics of him with his favorite toy, a magfloat.I have tried other toys but he seems to like his magfloat the best.He will chase it around the tank when Im cleaning the glass and pull it right off the glass when Im not around.Well thats all I have for now, thanks again Zy,What great pets these creatures make. Steve

http://www.tonmo.com/gallery/data/2/thumbs/octoo4.jpg
http://www.tonmo.com/gallery/data/2/thumbs/octoomag2.jpg
http://www.tonmo.com/gallery/data/2/thumbs/octoomag5.jpg
http://www.tonmo.com/gallery/data/2/thumbs/octoohand.jpg
http://www.tonmo.com/gallery/data/2/thumbs/octoomag3.jpg

Stretch looks great and about the same size as Spike. We hit the local seafood market who's name happens to be "Spikes' Seafood" and got some bay scallops and giant shrimp for Spike. He ate 2 scallops and came back looking for more! So far up to 3. They are about an 1" in size so he's had 3 of them so far. I remember Ollie, Nancy's octopus used to love them! Looks like we have another one that does too!

Do we have a count as to how many of the babies from Zyan are left? They all just hit 9 months old on May 8th.

Mr. Octopus is still with us and just survived a move. He hasn't grown as large as Spike; his mantle is maybe the size of a lime. We've been feeding him a small or medium fiddler crab either daily or every other day.

Dan

Sla'neesh is doing great,despite his run in with the mantis. He's taking large shrimp every other day. He begs when its feeding time. He'll come to the surface, roll over on his back, spread out his arms, and wave them till I give him the shrimp. I think he has a crush on Patrick, the CC star, in there with him since he spends alot of time "holding hands" with it.

Has anyone noticed a decrease in interaction as they are aging? Spike has become content to only seek me out when he wants food. He's huge. Size of a Grapefruit curled up. He swims across the tank. He really should be in a bigger tank, like a 100 gal. I did not expect him to reach the size that he has.

Mr. O. is still very interactive--he'll grab on to me even if he has just eaten (or in some cases if he still is). Mr. Octopus is much smaller than Spike, though, perhaps the size of a small orange curled up.

Dan

I'de say that Sla'neesh is still very interactive. He's always up for a game of "tug o war". Although lately he's been getting into rearranging the rock work more than ever. I'm blaming the fact that he watches all those home improvement shows with my wife all day!:lol:

Well ,I am sad to say that Stretch has passed on.I arrived home from work yesterday to find the tank cloudy (with ink I presume) and my worst fears where true ,Stretch was dead.There was a definate lack of interaction and activity the last month or so. Thank you all for your help and advice as this was my first octo.
Steve

RIP Stretch.:angelpus::cry:

RIP Stretch :angelpus:

RIP Stretch, sorry to hear about your loss...:cry:

RIP Stretch :angelpus:

Stretch was one of Zyan Silver's bimacs and was almost a year old.

Sorry for your loss - Stretch lived with you for a long time.


Nancy

:angelpus: RIP Stretch....

So do we know how many are remaining from Zyan? And Zyan are your babies producing dens with eggs yet?

Mr. Octopus was celebrating his first birthday, so that means that all of Zyan's bimacs had a birthday.

Who's left, other than Mr. Octopus?

Nancy

My octo, Ogilvie, passed away in August 07 and he was one of Zyan's babies. I got him in March, and he was doing really well up until early August when he started refusing to eat. I miss him, he was a fun little guy.

Sheryl

RIP Ogilvie :angelpus: