Introducing Moomin! Any ideas on ID?

Joined
Feb 11, 2008
Messages
63
Hello everyone,
I brought this beautiful girl (I am of course guessing on gender) home about 10 days ago, and she is doing wonderfully (all thanks to what I learnt on TONMO. I could never have done it without you guys). She spends most of her day inside a pot or her pipe, but comes out at least a couple of times a day for 10 - 30 minutes to jet about and watch what's going on beyond the tank. She is very friendly and happy to interact with my fingers, and when she has had enough she just crawls away to curl up again. She fed immediately, and has leapt upon every fiddler crab I have subsequently given her.
Anyway, I wondered if anyone could help ID her? It doesn't matter to me (I am smitten) but I want to make sure my temp range is about right (76F at present; she doesn't seem unhappy with this but I want to get it right).
She mostly looks like the first picture, and she often has a sort of resting flicker in her coloration (almost as if she is mimicking the play of light underwater). She will sometimes flash darker brown with white spots, especially when I'm playing with her, as shown in picture 2 (sorry it's a bit blurry). She is also often very dark all over (picture 3), particularly if she is inside or sitting on her black PVC pipe. I have also seen the "Pointy head, skunk stripe" pose (picture 4) several times. The final pictures (in the next post; I reached my 4 picture limit) are of her in a posture she did for about 20 mins yesterday. It looks aggressive to me (in my ignorance) and I was worried something had really stressed her out, but afterwards she just went to hang out on top of her pipe in normal colours, and she seems fine ever since. She has a mantle about 2 inch long, and arms about 5-6 inch fully extended (and incredibly fine at the tips) with a double row of suckers on each. Her web does not extend very far down her arms (perhaps 1.5 inch or so. She is mostly smooth textured, but does sometimes go a bit "wrinkly" on the mantle and she occasionally has little horns, one above each eye. I have not seen any evidence of eyespots.
Anyway; sorry about the essay and the huge number of pictures (believe me, a tiny fraction of the total I have taken!). Do I sound besotted? I am.
Thanks so much!
Lene
 

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Do you have any LR or irregular crawling surface in the tank? My theory on that pig tail is that it is the extra skin used to for cripsis so an octo with it should be able to show a great deal of texture (I could be all wet here, hobbiest minimal observation only based on the mercatoris that don't show it and are smooth and my hummelincki who was a camo master). To see exaggerated cripsis, you would need a quantity of rough terrain though. There is an artificial rock I was given that is rough and purple. Something similar should give you a better idea on her range of colors (not reds or oranges).

The body type and arm:mantle ratio are very similar to Octane's (hummelincki) but the tel-tale eye spot would have been quite apparent by now and the underside should normally be peachish with deep purple/blue rings around the sucker tips (Serendipity is not showing this underside coloration so it could be an age difference or that Serendipity and Octane are related but not the same). The bottom left picture might suggest this coloration but it is hard to tell (the peach underside was normal coloration but he could make it white but the sucker tips were always purple). The brown strip from the head, through the eye to the mantle also seems to be present but not the dark patch between the eyes. There is so little about hummelincki that it hard to know if there are multiples of similar species with slightly different trade marks or if males and females have different features. The body type and personality make me think there is a relationship.
 
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Oh, that snail at the end of the arm look (last picture, right) is quite common in Serendipity when she is nerveous. Octane would curl up the ends too, but not as dramatically. Serendipity can do it so fast it is facinating.
 
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Marginaris would be cool. I have wondered why (and Thales mentioned likewise) we are not seeing these in the trade as they appear to be abundant, small and diurnal. Hopefully Thales (who saw several in Bali) or Mucktopus will confirm.

One thing you might try is to put two pieces of something that when held together would form a den (note the picture Shipposhack points out) and see if she picks up and carried these around with her.
 
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dwhatley;125224 said:
One thing you might try is to put two pieces of something that when held together would form a den (note the picture Shipposhack points out) and see if she picks up and carried these around with her.

She has many bivalve shells in her tank, and she likes to curl up inside one of the large mussel shells (very cute; I will try and get a picture). I haven't seen her carry anything around with her though (she mostly jets about a bit or crawls over the substrate quite slowly), but this might be because I have provided an abundance of ready-made dens in her space (several flower pots and a pipe). She does sometimes use the shells to barricade herself in the pipe or pot she is currently occupying.
As to her being diurnal, she is certainly somewhat active during the day (coming out a couple of times for 10 - 20 minutes at a time), although as I mentioned previously she spends most of the day tucked up somewhere, with just an eye peeping out. I don't know if she is much more active at night.
PS. Thanks for everyone agreeing how gorgeous she is; I thought I might just be biased!
 
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