- Joined
- Jan 22, 2004
- Messages
- 3,019
After a bunch of discussion in this thread -
Zebra Octopus For Sale In The Bay Area (a good thing?) - here goes my wonderpus journal.
Oh - here is a nice link to mimic/wonderpus id:
http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~chuffard/index_files/WunderMimic.htm
Getting this occy was an easy/hard decision for me. Easy because I was in the right place at the right time (I would not have bought it from and LFS) and happened to have a tank ready. Hard because we simply don't know enough about the species in the wild and have little idea if they are being overfished or suffering from habitat destruction. They sell for 300-600 dollars at LFS and this is a mixed blessing; they are expensive so they will continue to be collected, but not many will buy them because they are expensive.
I have a good relationship with some local wholesalers, and I was able to pick up a Wonderpus photogenicus from one of them on 2/16/07. This is the same wholesaler that called me last year with about a wonderpus that I brokered to Dr Roy Caldwell at UCB. This time, two came in from Sulawesi, but I only had space for one and I have zero experience with the species so both of them was out of the question. I was please to be able to obtain the animal at the wholesale level, as it went from shipping straight to my tank.
The wonderpus, named Fontanelle (I think all octos should be named
Fontanelle) is small. The mantle is only about an inch long and the
arms when spread out from tip to tip maybe 16 inches. Currently, it is an 18 gallon tall, the top of the tank is covered and weighed down, that is and has been connected to my larger cuttle
system - I'll see how it does. I don't want to stress it by moving it from system to system too quickly. If I do decide to move it, I will either plumb a new tank into the existing system, or talk to Tru Vu about slightly modifying a standard system they build for occys - something I have been interested in talking to them about for over a year.
The tank has a 1 inch 'white' sand bed that I covered with black sand on the idea that wunderpus live in the 'muck' and that the darker substrate might be better for it.
The first night, Fontanelle was out and about in the tank almost
immediately. I dropped in a bait shrimp that I also feed to the cuttles
and the next morning there was half a shrimp left still inside the
shrimps shell.
Fontanelle has made its home behind the cpr overflow (stuffed with foam to prevent the occy from climbing through the overflow) and has been out and about parading on the glass every morning and often during the day. Last night, it was curled up sleeping in the vertical middle of a corner of the tank essentially in the open. Sometimes it likes to hide between the side of the magnetic glass cleaner and the side of the tank. It doesn't seem to be scared of me at all, and has eaten 3 times since I got it.
It doesn't seem particularly strong, and I haven't seen it even try to
push its arms out of the water or dig very much. There are some rocks and some pvc in the tank, but they have so far been ignored.
Zebra Octopus For Sale In The Bay Area (a good thing?) - here goes my wonderpus journal.
Oh - here is a nice link to mimic/wonderpus id:
http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~chuffard/index_files/WunderMimic.htm
Getting this occy was an easy/hard decision for me. Easy because I was in the right place at the right time (I would not have bought it from and LFS) and happened to have a tank ready. Hard because we simply don't know enough about the species in the wild and have little idea if they are being overfished or suffering from habitat destruction. They sell for 300-600 dollars at LFS and this is a mixed blessing; they are expensive so they will continue to be collected, but not many will buy them because they are expensive.
I have a good relationship with some local wholesalers, and I was able to pick up a Wonderpus photogenicus from one of them on 2/16/07. This is the same wholesaler that called me last year with about a wonderpus that I brokered to Dr Roy Caldwell at UCB. This time, two came in from Sulawesi, but I only had space for one and I have zero experience with the species so both of them was out of the question. I was please to be able to obtain the animal at the wholesale level, as it went from shipping straight to my tank.
The wonderpus, named Fontanelle (I think all octos should be named
Fontanelle) is small. The mantle is only about an inch long and the
arms when spread out from tip to tip maybe 16 inches. Currently, it is an 18 gallon tall, the top of the tank is covered and weighed down, that is and has been connected to my larger cuttle
system - I'll see how it does. I don't want to stress it by moving it from system to system too quickly. If I do decide to move it, I will either plumb a new tank into the existing system, or talk to Tru Vu about slightly modifying a standard system they build for occys - something I have been interested in talking to them about for over a year.
The tank has a 1 inch 'white' sand bed that I covered with black sand on the idea that wunderpus live in the 'muck' and that the darker substrate might be better for it.
The first night, Fontanelle was out and about in the tank almost
immediately. I dropped in a bait shrimp that I also feed to the cuttles
and the next morning there was half a shrimp left still inside the
shrimps shell.
Fontanelle has made its home behind the cpr overflow (stuffed with foam to prevent the occy from climbing through the overflow) and has been out and about parading on the glass every morning and often during the day. Last night, it was curled up sleeping in the vertical middle of a corner of the tank essentially in the open. Sometimes it likes to hide between the side of the magnetic glass cleaner and the side of the tank. It doesn't seem to be scared of me at all, and has eaten 3 times since I got it.
It doesn't seem particularly strong, and I haven't seen it even try to
push its arms out of the water or dig very much. There are some rocks and some pvc in the tank, but they have so far been ignored.