Greetings Cephalophiles...

Il Pulpo

Hatchling
Registered
Joined
Feb 5, 2008
Messages
5
Il Pulpo has arrived!
Salutations!
:sly:

-Il Pulpo​
 

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Thanks. It's a Rick Rietveld surf design called Isle de Mirage.

I should probably mention a few things by way of introduction since my first post was hardly informative...

My name is Tad. And I'm a reeferholic. :wink:

I have kept a saltwater reeftank for 10+ years. Currently, I have a 125g with 20g sump, custom skimmer setup, SEN 900, and two Giesemann 250 Halides. I have primarily soft corals ranging from mushrooms to lettuce coral to candy cane and polyps. I have only three fish; a clown, a flame angel, and a scribbled rabbitfish. My favorite tank resident is my Harlequin Shrimp, and I also have other shrimp (green, candy cane, cleaner) sea cucumbers, starfish, snails, hermits, and more. And a mangrove. I know that my tank is currently incompatible with Ceph introduction, but when my Harlequin dies (three years old) I will likely offload my fish and look into a Bimac as my first intelligent tank resident.

I spent my summers growing up at the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratories (or MDIBL) in Maine, where my father specialized in regeneration research. Early, hands-on introduction to Squalus (Dogfish shark), skates, lampreys, lobsters and other lab residents ensured a lifelong oceanic aficionado, though by no means an expert. Today I reside in Portland, Oregon. I plan to retire in about ten years to someplace tropical to ensure a constant supply of fresh, clean, and adequately warm seawater to attempt large scale aquaculture.

Anyway, enough about me. Tony, I must tell you that I am impressed with the name of the site. You have apparently managed to use the first letters of your first and last names to create a site name which coincides rather nicely with the assumed name and purpose of the site. I'll assume this is intentional, and ask if the interest preceded the name choice, or how this came about?

Thanks for the site and the great information. I tend to visit forums often but keep relatively quiet, so you won't see a whole lot of pointless Il Pulpo posts to bolster post count, but I'll be here, reading up and studying, to make sure that my octoparenting is as ethically and biologically appropriate as possible!

Peace,

Il Pulpo
 
:welcome: to TONMO, and I'll second the nice pic comment...
 
Welcome to another invert enthusiast! I have a pet coral banded shrimp who takes food from a turkey baster!

When the time comes, I'm sure you will enjoy ceph keeping.

Nancy
 
I am sure Tony will respond, but should he fail, my understanding is that he looked for an interesting subject that would fit TONMO (I think oncology was one choice ;>) so the clever part was in his managing the site, not in rearranging his name!
 
I briefly explain the site origins here. Oncology was indeed a consideration, and I actually coded one (pathetic) page on that topic as I was sorting it out (but never uploaded it). My long-standing interest in deep sea creatures led my wife to encourage "octopus". While I've never been a ceph "expert", I certainly knew more about (and had more interest in) octopuses at the time, than I did oncology!
 
Well, folks, my research has once again brought me back to Tonmo, and I remembered my login!

I had a rather traumatic experience with my reef last winter, when it snowed over three feet, we lost power for 5 days, and so many others were without power, that we were relegated to bottom of the list out here in the sticks.

Long story short, we ran out of fuel for the generator, and were desperately scrambling to save our tank. Despite moving all the critters into coolers near the woodstove, adding stove-warmed water to the tank/coolers, and so on, we had a pretty catastrophic die-off. The net result was a re-assessment of our ability to responsibly maintain a tank for a ceph, and as it turned out, survey said 'no'.

Broke the tank down earlier this year, sold off the remaining livestock and rock, and have only the Giesemann Halides and sump left to get rid of.

Decided instead to spend the moneys recovered (and a few more ducats) on memorializing some of the friends lost in the storm, and a few dreams unrealized, namely my Octo.

I'm about 40+ hours into a full back tattoo. Sorry, not going to post pics anywhere till it's all done, but the octopus is central to the design. We've done most of the linework for my whole back, and quite a bit of shading and coloring in areas other than the octopus.

My inclination (particularly after the news stories about tool use last week) is to try to emulate a pattern similar to a marginatus. I'm having a hard time finding anything with decent resolution to provide my artist. Anyone have any good pics of Amphioctopus Marginatus / Octopus Marginatus / Veined Octopus / Coconut Octopus?

Thanks in advance!

Oh, and I also included a banded sea krait (yellow lipped sea krait) in my body art... the head wraps under my right arm and onto my chest, while the tail wraps around my left hip to the front, and below my belt. Plus numerous fish/star/seahorse/shrimp/snail/crab/jellies/kelp/corals/etc... lots of work... lots of pain! And all worth it in the end.

I'll be back in a few months with pics... goal to completion is June 2010, but we'll see...

Your brother in (eight) arms,

Il Pulpo
 

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