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Eggs!

Joined
Sep 2, 2012
Messages
13
I purchased 2 Indonesian octo's and one of them laid eggs and has since passed. The eggs are fertile as they already have eyes and are about the size of a grain of rice. They're in a different aquarium with a light flow on them to immulate the mom blowing on them. There are small pregnant shrimp in the tank hopefully for a food source when they both hatch. Any tips comments help is appreciated.
 
:welcome: Alex!
Sadly, you likely have eggs from an octopus that will have a pelagic stage before settling to the substrate. There has been almost no success raising any of these hatchlings within TONMO and only a very, very few for other small egg species recorded for O. vulgaris and an unremembered Alaskan species. Most of the work on small egg hatchling survival is being done in Europe in an attempt to raise O. vulgaris for food. The few successes I have found were only able to bring a few (out of 30,000 or more) to settlement and those did not survive to adults. Although it is thought that food is the major failing factor, lack of success means we really don't know why they don't survive.

That being said, most keepers give it a go, more with an eye toward how long they can achieve survival rather than any real expectation on raising young. There are a few journals in the Raising Octopus from Eggs forum that may give you ideas for your attempt.
 
that's unfortunate. all the same im determined to still give it a go. a few of the shrimp have had their young already and are extremely small could that be a possible food source? any other suggestions for possible food sources? ill check out that forum. thanks. any help is appreciated i've only had them a few months but the remainder is doing quite well as far a i can tell.
 
here is a picture of the eggs not sure if youll be able to see the eye spots in it or not, ill try to post one every two days or so.
 

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It is well worth taking photos every couple of days. I have had the opportunity to have several of the large egg species (some of these we have a little success with as they are benthic from hatching and easier to raise). I found that taking several pictures and then keeping the best ones from each photo shoot gave a nice view of the developing eggs (you should see some of my attempts along with others in the forum). Any very small crustacean is likely to be appropriate but the only recorded successes included live crab zoea. Since success is non-existent, it is difficult to recommend or dissuade but we have found that brine shrimp do not work for cuttlefish. The hatchling cuttlefish will eat the brine new hatch but do not survive and most concur that brine is an unlikely food for any success (it has been tried many times of course since it is an easily producible small food).

I have only seen peppermint shrimp hatchlings and then only on the night they hatch (I kept an overfed mating pair in a breeder with my last octo hatchlings with hopes that they would be food). Are you successfully keeping them alive longer? This in itself would be interesting to know and to learn your environment if they are surviving.
 
im not sure what type of shrimp it is but it is about the size of a ghost shrimp, looks like one too. ill post a picture later. the babies were still alive last time i looked ill have to check on them again and let you know. im not doing anything special the tank has a filter with no media in it for flow as well as an aerator. one large live rock and a heater set at 75F. only inhabitants are the shrimp, octo eggs and an asterina star. i have seen quite a few shrimp hatchlings in my sump of my display tank as well that seem to live quite awhile.
i want to try and experiment with different types of food for the hatchlings and see what happens.
 

Here is the most recent picture, i couldn't get a clear shot on the shrimp. looks just like a ghost shrimp, but lives in saltwater and has little green eggs. the Octo eggs are looking more like an octopus every day. there are spots on their hoods and distinct tentacles, any idea how far along they are or how much longer till they hatch? i believe they're 2-3 weeks old i have made a separate container to grow their food, small copepods and other tiny things i'm hoping they can eat. i plan on putting some in my sump, there are a lot of small organisms in there, which was my source of food to grow in the container.
Any comments or advice is welcomed!!!
 

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Egg hatching time is not a clear determination. It is known that water temperature can drastically alter the timing in any species but what temperatures and how much time is not clear. The warm water small egg species (with a definite exception for cold water animals) seem to hatch much sooner than the large egg. This makes sense when you consider the large egg animals are fully formed at hatching where the small egg animals do not fully resemble the adults (very short arms and few chromatophores being the visually obvious). The transformation is not considered a true metamorphosis but more of a continued development closer to premature birth. From your description I would say any day (likely night) now will start the hatching process. Hatching can take place over as many as 10 days but normally we see a small cluster (say 20) and then a massive group hatching in the following 24 hours.
 
my temperature is around 75F. i wish i knew when she laid them but im pretty sure it was with in the first days if not the day i got her in. which would put them at 3 1/2 weeks. which seems pretty accurate with the few other things ive read being that it takes around a month to hatch.
 
At 75, you will probably see the longer (the shortest has been about 10 days) time frame. Another thing we just don't know is if extending the cycle with lower temps has any positive (or negative) effects but we do know warmer temps accelerate hatching. Like you, often we don't know the exact date eggs are laid. For the larger egg species it seems to be between 8 and 10 weeks and 10 to 30 days for the smaller but the range is large and often guestimated.

I DID expect your next post to say you had hatchlings though :biggrin2:
 
i raised the temperature 2 days ago from 75 - 77. this morning at 12:45 am the first one hatched. hatching continued untill around 2:15 am around 50 hatched. i moved them into my sump, and another container where i was growing small copepods and shrimp young. some remained in the container they were hatched in. this morning there were only 5 more that had hatched. more of the eggs look very close to hatching though many are discolored meaning theyre dead. i dont think i had quite enough flow in them. young are able to flash brown/clear upon hatching, are photoreactive, and seem to be able to swim backwards just as easily as forwards. :biggrin2:
 

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