After about four months of preparation an octopus has arrived this morning. Thanks to everyone who gave me advice in the "Greetings!" thread; you were all a great help.
I've named him/her Grendel, because I don't know what it is but I do know it scares my girlfriend to death. Such a little thing to be afraid of...
I ended up buying an "indo-pacific" octopus from liveaquaria.com; having basically zero luck finding anybody who sold a specific species I thought I'd give it a try. I had heard good things about the website but nothing specifically about their octopuses.
It arrived quadrupled bagged in a very well sealed Styrofoam box, so I was pretty pleased with the shipping. The FedEx guy handing me a box that had big bold "THIS SIDE UP" letters upside down was less than impressive, but he got away with just a dirty look.
So I opened it up and found the octopus balled up in a corner of the bag, smaller than a golf ball, and almost entirely green. I setup the bag inside a five gallon water cooler, stole some water to test, and began a drip acclimation from the tank. He spread out abit and moved around the bag some during the process.
My tank:
76.2F, 1.025
Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate all read 0
ph 8.4
Shipping water:
72.2F, 1.022
Ammonia 1ppm, Nitrite .5ppm, Nitrate 10ppm
ph 7.8
Three hours later I moved his bag (now roughly 3/4 tank water, 1/4 shipping water) into my tank and turned it upside down. I had to hold it open which I think made him skittish to leave, but eventually he slid out and promptly vanished under the rocks.
From what I could tell in the bag during acclimation it had a head size of about 1 to 1.5 inches and arms 6 to 7 inches long. It maintained a greenish color most of the time, though it turned white and brown at times. No discernible eye spots that I could find. It looks most like a briarius from pictures I've seen but it came out of the wrong ocean (supposedly) for it to be that and the arms are maybe a little thicker. I took many pictures but it stayed very wrapped up in itself in the bag and vanished too fast in the tank for me to get any good shot of it. I played "find the octopus in the pitch black tank" for about 15 minutes and gave up. As soon as I can get a better picture of it I will post it and hopefully somebody can help me ID it. It would've helped to have a better mastery of my camera, a lot of the shots have a blinding reflection of the camera flash. Nobody is going to accuse me of being a photographer anytime soon.
I've named him/her Grendel, because I don't know what it is but I do know it scares my girlfriend to death. Such a little thing to be afraid of...
I ended up buying an "indo-pacific" octopus from liveaquaria.com; having basically zero luck finding anybody who sold a specific species I thought I'd give it a try. I had heard good things about the website but nothing specifically about their octopuses.
It arrived quadrupled bagged in a very well sealed Styrofoam box, so I was pretty pleased with the shipping. The FedEx guy handing me a box that had big bold "THIS SIDE UP" letters upside down was less than impressive, but he got away with just a dirty look.
So I opened it up and found the octopus balled up in a corner of the bag, smaller than a golf ball, and almost entirely green. I setup the bag inside a five gallon water cooler, stole some water to test, and began a drip acclimation from the tank. He spread out abit and moved around the bag some during the process.
My tank:
76.2F, 1.025
Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate all read 0
ph 8.4
Shipping water:
72.2F, 1.022
Ammonia 1ppm, Nitrite .5ppm, Nitrate 10ppm
ph 7.8
Three hours later I moved his bag (now roughly 3/4 tank water, 1/4 shipping water) into my tank and turned it upside down. I had to hold it open which I think made him skittish to leave, but eventually he slid out and promptly vanished under the rocks.
From what I could tell in the bag during acclimation it had a head size of about 1 to 1.5 inches and arms 6 to 7 inches long. It maintained a greenish color most of the time, though it turned white and brown at times. No discernible eye spots that I could find. It looks most like a briarius from pictures I've seen but it came out of the wrong ocean (supposedly) for it to be that and the arms are maybe a little thicker. I took many pictures but it stayed very wrapped up in itself in the bag and vanished too fast in the tank for me to get any good shot of it. I played "find the octopus in the pitch black tank" for about 15 minutes and gave up. As soon as I can get a better picture of it I will post it and hopefully somebody can help me ID it. It would've helped to have a better mastery of my camera, a lot of the shots have a blinding reflection of the camera flash. Nobody is going to accuse me of being a photographer anytime soon.