i have a small/baby california 2-spot octopus that, recently, has blown me away at how much it's been out. for weeks it was crawling around on the glass, looking out...swimming around, chasing the 1/2 dozen shore crabs i have in there even if he didn't catch them. i recorded about 5 hours straight that he was out at one point.

but, for the last 3 days he's been in his hole, hiding in the rock. my water parameters are perfect, remembering the slightly-higher salinity, my water is the same as it was when he was active and i've done significant water changes with an ammonia level of 0!

any ideas?

Could be nothing, could be the start of senescence. What temp are you keeping it at and how long have you had it?

senescence? he's really small, tentacles maybe 3 inches long max.

i've had him about 1 1/2 months, found him under a rock buried in mud (no water!). i thought it was a bunch of small worms until i saw the light pink coloring on the tentacles.

Size, age and maturity aren't really correlated in cephs. But he may just be full/tired/hiding for his own octopus reasons!

J