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He's Dead Jim.. or is he? (Almost dead octopus, any suggestions?)

Green_Tree

O. vulgaris
Registered
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Nov 15, 2009
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90
Some of you may know that Ive been lurking around the site for a few months. Well today I took that next step and got my first octopus. He is a Briareus and his name is Olaf. I purchased him from Tom's Caribbean.

The day started to get excited when the FedEx guy arrived at my door 8 hours from when the octopus was put on the truck. You can guess i was not happy with this service but there was not much i could do.

I quickly brought the package up to my room and slowly opened it in dim lighting to reveal a bag of black and brown water. At this point my time table was moved up. i slowly poured out water to reveal what appeared to be a dead octopus. :boohoo: But i figured what the heck i can try and began to slowly warm the water back up by floating the octopus and jug with just enough transport water for him to be submerged, in a bucket of warm water.

I began to write the dead on arrival email to Tom when lo and behold there was a jet of water towards the surface. Olaf was breathing. :heart: I slowly began the acclimation process and he is still acclimating via drip method. Since then he is looking a lot better, He is upright and now reacts when i check on him.

Any suggestions on anything else i could do or have done wrong would be greatly appreciated. Hoping he pulls through this. :fingerscrossed:

Also please note that this was a shipping issue and was not the suppliers fault.

Here's what he looked like when he arrived.
 

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I will now take a very personal interest... I so do hope it survives... And please, keep us posted!
 
So far he is looking a lot better. He is responsive and moving and seems to be acting normal. The acclimation is proceeding as normal and it is looking like he will make a full recovery. I would take a picture but since he is now responsive i do not want to stress him any further.
 
Mine arrived in a Cardboard box, with a few layers of newspaper and a heat pack that was barely even producing heat when it got here. I live in Iowa and it is also fairly chilly out today here, with temps in the Upper to Lower 30F's.
 
Mine is just barely holding on, dying as I type. I've gotten octos from Tom before, and have never had troubles. Sometimes this just happens and that's part of the risk, but it's weird to have 3 out of 4 go bad like this. Also, it looks old and at the end of it's life anyway (the skin on the mantle just looks wrong). Since it "arrived alive," I'm not sure that there is anything Tom can do for me, but I'll contact him anyway. I have a box from my last Live Aquaria shipment, I'm thinking or asking if he could give me a new octo if I ship him this better box and pay for shipping again...
 
Well things look to be going ok. I finished the acclimation and got olaf into the my tank. he promptly climbed out of the the cup he was in and disappeared into the rock work. We will have to wait and see but as of now he seems to have made a very good recovery. Will post pictures if i see him again and can do so without startling him. :fingerscrossed:
 

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