Caught either a juvenile E. Dofleini or O. Rubescens last night.

From what I am seeing it really looks like you have an E. dofleini there. The characteristics I am basing that on is the singular frontal white spot (in between the the left and right #1 legs, on the side of the head opposite the mantle), the paddle-ish looking papillae on the few pictures it has papillae, and the dark eye bar.

Oh.. and if you feed him well in a few years he will likely need around 1000 gal at minimum tank. The smallest I have ever kept a full grown E. dofleini in has been 750 gal, and that was flow-through.
 
Taollan;183707 said:
From what I am seeing it really looks like you have an E. dofleini there. The characteristics I am basing that on is the singular frontal white spot (in between the the left and right #1 legs, on the side of the head opposite the mantle), the paddle-ish looking papillae on the few pictures it has papillae, and the dark eye bar.
The dark eye bar was what was making me think GPO, and I havn't seen the 3 lower "eye lashes" that everyone describes on the Rubes.

Taollan;183707 said:
Oh.. and if you feed him well in a few years he will likely need around 1000 gal at minimum tank. The smallest I have ever kept a full grown E. dofleini in has been 750 gal, and that was flow-through.
Its funny that you mention this because I've been honestly planning on making an old hot tub into an outdoor coldwater pond recessed into my deck :biggrin2: I swear to god, not joking.

Here's a video of the little guy I took this morning when I caught him running around the tank.

 
Yeah, I did my masters under Dr. David Cowles at Walla Walla University (creator of that site) on primarily O. rubescens, but actually started out doing work there on E. dofleini. I contributed several pictures to most of the cephalopod pages on that website.

Anyhow, lets see if we can't nail down for good what the ID on your octo is. Take a look at the mantle, and look at the orientation of the darker patches of chromatophores. If they tend to run in lines down the mantle, then GPO, if they tend to form circles, then O. rubescens.
Here area couple of images to demonstrate:
E. dofleini: http://calphotos.berkeley.edu/imgs/512x768/0000_0000/1204/0770.jpeg
O. rubescens: http://www.wallawalla.edu/academics...alopoda/Octopus_rubescens2KirtOnthank2007.jpg

Let me know what you determine!
 
Are you going to slap on chillers to the hot tub conversion because what are you going to do when it's summer? You should totally keep those jets for your tank and connect a sump to it.

Just a question is the pond going to be open toped?:indiffer:
 
Cuddlycuttlefsh;183734 said:
Are you going to slap on chillers to the hot tub conversion because what are you going to do when it's summer? You should totally keep those jets for your tank and connect a sump to it.

Just a question is the pond going to be open toped?:indiffer:

Yeah I have a 3/4 horse chiller on my big tank in the garage that I may move if I set up the outdoor pond. I can just plumb it inline on the existing pumps and jets. I was going to run a small sump that sits above the level of the tub and has water pushed up to it by the main pumps and waterfalls back into the tank over some rocks. It'll house the skimmer and any other filtration equipment I want to run. Since the hot-tubs are designed with insulating in mind, the work perfect for holding the temp at a constant low temperature as well as a high temp. So instead of heating it, I'll be chilling it. I'll either paint the inside with epoxy paint, or do some of the spray foam rock work with texture like I did on my current display. Best part is you can pick one up for free on craigslist any day of the week :smile:

It will be open topped, but it will be under an extention off of my deck that will have a gazebo type open roof over it with skylight windows. That will allow as much natural sunlight into the pond as possible for the green anemones and algae, but will prevent rain water from overfilling the pond and fluctuating the salinity.

Lets just see if my wife lets me get away with it though :wink:
 
Well I observed my octo for a couple hours tonight, doing pretty much nothing, just like normal. He came out after lights out, so I snagged him up and took a quick video. Hopefully more visable than the last one.

I did notice that he has several small dark spots in between his eyes on the top of his head. Dont know if this is a tell tail charictoristic or not, but I thought I should mention it since it doesnt come out on the video very well.

Anyways, heres the video:
[video]Photo and Video Storage | Photobucket

 
Wow, nice! I like your open toped concept, morning, day, and night lighting for the pond/tank at it's best. From the picture you recently just posted, I'm pretty positive now about the octopus being a rubescens because now I have a good look of those white spots on the dorsal mantle.
 
I like the little guy, he's more active than I thought. Are these octopuses nocturnal or not? What do you think, I did some research and I got all sorts of answers that it's active at the day time and that it's nocturnal etc.:read: The internet is not a really trustworthy place to find positively CORRECT information and I'm just glad I have you guys to turn to.

Some of the sites that I came across


http://seanet.stanford.edu/OtherMolluscs/index.html#Octopus_rubescens

http://www.coldwaterimages.com/red_octopus.html

(The one on top of this text says it's more of a daytime octopus in the second paragraph)
 
Cuddlycuttlefsh;183756 said:
Wow, nice! I like your open toped concept, morning, day, and night lighting for the pond/tank at it's best. From the picture you recently just posted, I'm pretty positive now about the octopus being a rubescens because now I have a good look of those white spots on the dorsal mantle.

If you mean the white spots that are showing in the picture below, thats just the cover image for the video. Click on it and you'll see that the white spots are actually just debris that was on the surface of the water.

 

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