Clarence - O. briareus

[Haydawg]

well i went to my lfs and the peppermint shrimp were pretty small. almost not worth it ahah im almost positive clarence would monch down on them!

i went ahead and bought " aiptasia x " it came with a little syringe.




anyway i woke up and saw this....


clarence has the tank to himself so he's the only one to blame & is it possible to have the red light on 24/7 ? do i even need the hood light on during the day ?

 

[DWhatley]

Room light is fine for the octopus (or any ceph), other things in the tank (and human viewing and photographs) may need the extra lighting at some point though and it may be best to use some daytime lighting simiply not to have to change his envionment later. I leave my red lights on 24/7. The only impact is photography as the red will be picked up by the camera. On my larger tanks the red is only in one section. The younger octos all have chosen the red light section for dens but as they have aged and approach senescene seem to move to the unlit area. Since they come out regularly as they age, this has not been a problem with being able to see them. On my smaller tanks (for dwarf octos) the entire tank has been lit with red 24/7 without problems (other than photography). IMO, you do want to establish a lighting routine and stay consistent.

Odd he did not eat the clam but it does show you how strong they are even at this size. Be sure to remove the dead ones.

 

[Haydawg]

ill leave my red lights on 24/7 with the hood light on during the day then ! is this a normal thing for a clam to do? i thought he had eaten some of it.

i went to a different Asian market today in search of blue crab claws. once again though they didn't even have blue crabs! i scrounged through the normal crab section any way and came across this



would he eat this? its probly from a stone crab or whatever

 

[DWhatley]

They are seasonal so you will have to check from time to time. We still have a bag from our last trek but I will try to remember to post next time we see them. Any raw crab meat is good food for them but crab does not freeze well whole. Removing the claws (or in our case scrounging the claws from the live crab bins) does not get the contaminants from the body and works really well.

I think that may be stone crab. Give him the arm one time and the claw the next. We find removing the meat does not work as well as just giving them the meat in the shell. Octavia separates the small claw from the larger but the rest of the shell stays in one piece and is empty when she is done. Yeti is still too small to handle them but we have cut a slice of arm to give to him. Getting it small enough and still containing meat is difficult and if it is too big he will abandon it. I have tried just the meat on a stick but it breaks up to easily to be practical.

It is likely that Clarence opened the clam. I have not seen them open like that when they die naturally but I don't see signes that anything was eaten. Neal brought home one for Octavia tonight and she has been working on it ever since (I would have preferred to have left it overnight in tank water but he gave it too her before I knew he brought it home .

 

[Haydawg]

Oh okay, yea looks like clarence got two meals out of this one hahah! you should have seen the looks i received from the locals

i was confused about the clam but i returned to my room to seee this



clarence did work! haahha

 

[CaptFish]

That is definitely a stone crab claw. Be careful various crabs are sometimes sold already cooked, stone crab being one of them.

 

[DWhatley]

Quite possibly you interrupted him just after he got it open. I think Octavia is STILL working on her's

I have never gotten an answer on why the crab must be raw. Arguments against a fish diet have been documented with multiple studies attempting to find an inexpensive feed to raise octopus as food but I can't find anything on what happens to crab when it is cooked that makes it not suitable. It would be so much easier to find crab if cooked would be an acceptable alternative but some things are best accepted until you can find disputing arguments. It would be nice if someone in a his master's program would design such a study

Speaking of octofeed, Octobot spotted this article about feed research in Spain:
FIS - Worldnews - Important progress in feed development for octopus

Edit 2017 This post links an article that has a bit of information on why raw is better than cooked food.

 

[Haydawg]

the crabs were all alive in a big water tray , one of them was unlucky enough to lose his claw!

yeah ive never heard of why its bad either! that study is interesting, i cant believe the octos would eat peas and eggs lol

 

[DWhatley]

I don't think it is time to start home brewing our octo food but it is nice to get occasional reports on the progress in Spain. Mexico has started a breeding program for O. maya and is teaching its methods (I can never remember the small country). It would be nice to see them consider offering the ones that don't grow fast enough to the hobby industry but they likely end up as farm animal (octo) food

 

[Haydawg]

ahahah yeah true that ! thats sad

Do you breed octos?

 

[DWhatley]

The only commercial breeder that I am aware of is the group in Mexico. Roy has bred numerous species in the labs at Berkley and several TONMO members have had success hobby tank breeding the Caribbean dwarf, O. mercatoris to siblings that hatched from a wild caught female. O. maya is a large egg species and similar to O.vulgaris in size. I updated the thread I started on Farming awhile back and moved it to the Raising Octopus from Eggs subforum as a sticky.

Think of the logistics of attempting this and you will see why it is not common. Many animals will become cannibalistic when introduced (especially mixed species but we see even same species consuming each other in the wild) so just the act of putting a male and a female together invites the death of one, if not both. Then there is the number of eggs and hatchlings to consider. How does a home keeper (or even a public aquarium) house and feed hundreds (thousands or 10's of thousands in the case of the small egg species) of hatchlings.

More common than intentional breeding is the occasional hatching of eggs brooded by a captive female. So far we have had success with O. bimaculoides, O. mercatoris and one pair of O. briareus. The mercs are probably the most successful as siblings will live together and inter breed and we have had second generations of these only.

I did make an attempt at mating the O. briareus siblings and the mating did produce fertile eggs but none of the hatchlings survived and the two that I examined shortly after hatching were flawed.
Here is a link to the photos and videos of those two nights of keeper terror. Fortunately, the sound is turned off on my camera so the videos are General Audience

 

[Haydawg]

oh yeah i didnt mean for sale haha i just noticed that you mention a lot of different octos ! haha inter breeding ,, i looked at the pictures and vid. im really liking that duel tank thingy you got going

 

[DWhatley]

Interestingly, we have very little knowledge of breeding habits in situ. I noticed my O. bimaculoides and my O. vulgaris, in aquariums across the room do what I have come to term a mating dance. Being in two separate tanks without shared water, there was visual contact only so no chemical indicators were cues. My two O. briareus would do a similar dance and when I did mate them, there was no suggestion of mortal aggression (much to my relief) and mating was immediate. I am guessing from observation clues and some written descriptions that the female likely controls the "purity" of the species with her acceptance or rejection of the male (which has sometimes ended in predation even after acceptance) as well as the acceptance or rejection of the sperm (there is suggestion that, in cuttlefish anyway, the female can both remove and choose the sperm used to fertilize the eggs) and what sperm is compatible with the eggs. Experiments in housing two differernt species in the same tank, even with dividers have all ended up with the death of one animal, regardless of sex.

The "tube tank" was a nice eBay find. It was a freshwater tank (as were most of ours to begin with) and the tank build out is in the Tank Talk forum if you are interested in how we converted it. Like all tanks it has it pluses and minuses. It is more like cleaning two tanks than one and is not the best for photography

 

[Haydawg]

woaah thats really weird that the octopus will choose ( and know the difference ) of species! my tank was from a freshwater guy too! i will look into tank talk haha. Clarence ate 5 clams in one day ! what a fatty (F*ck i gotta clean my tank)

 

[DWhatley]

We don't know if they crossbreed but it does not appear to happen often if it occurs at all.

That IS alot of food in one day for any octo (one would be closer to what I have seen) and it appears he at the whole clam. CaptFish's Legs was a big eater as I recall and was quite large at the end of his life. None of my briareus have eaten large meals but I suspect you are in for an abnormal food bill with Clarence. It will be interesting if he fasts for a day or two now.