Kooah's Hatchlings - O.briareus

[DWhatley]

Given my druthers
Seafood with covers
Beats land meats
Grilled as treats
Prized by others

 

[corw314]

Interesting thought on using a flash. I have had octopuses that once flashed will run as soon as they see the camera, so I choose not to use it. Someone recommended setting up a separate light. I wonder how it affects them as I know it bothers my eyes!

 

[DWhatley]

Tank Statuses - Week 5

Day 30(Fri) Found 2 Fed 1
Brood Tank: Sitting Bull found 4 times ran from food
Puddles Sump: Hepzibah on outer wall and fed easily

Day 31(Sat) Found 5 Fed 4
Brood Tank: LateForDinner in LR eventually ate. SittingBull located but did not eat (failed to realize light was on white, not red)
Puddles Sump: Hepzibah waiting for dinner fed easily. Did not want second helpings
Puddles Tank: Mama Cass came out on overflow wall and easily took the shore shrimp. 5:30 AM ish found Sam. Had to chase him a bit but he finally came to the pipette and took the shrimp. Still second biggest by a considerable margin but not as large as Cassy.

Day 32(Sun) Found 4 Fed 4
Seeded the tanks with Cyclop-eeze/Oyster Egg mix at 11:20 PM,
- LateForDinner: 11:30 but took some coaxing to eat (table shrimp leg, still eating leg at 1:00 AM).
- SittingBull: 1:00AM just saw an arm in the LR and offered shrimp leg in an opening in the general travel direction (not in the ope) SB took the offering readily.
- Cassy: 11:45 on back wall, took her food and disappeared. 3:45 AM found her den (I think) and fed a shore shrimp (refused table shrimp tail but stayed put while I fished out a live shrimp, dispatched it and offered)
- Sam: 3:45 AM had trouble extracting the mysis (no more shrimp leg available) and had his arm up the pipette without successful extraction. I reloaded and found him again (I may have found his den) and this time he emptied the pipette.
- Hepzibah: still missing, could the pods or the flash from last night's pictures.

Day 33(Mon) Found 4 Fed 2
Seeded the tanks with Cyclop-eeze/Oyster Egg mix at 10:30 PM,
- LateForDinner: 10:45 found but could not feed, serpent inisisted it wanted the shrimp.
- SittingBull: 11:30 PM Found on back wall, took shore shrimp from pipette
- Cassy: 12:30 AM Found her crawling in LR, would not come out and shrimp dropped from pipette trying to coax her. I think she took the shrimp as she seemed to be carrying something when I saw her a few minutes later.
- Sam
- Hepzibah: 11:45 Found and Fed, was waiting on front wall for her oversized dinner. Later I found the shrimp uneaten. I striped the shell but she left the tank wall and I cannot find her.

Day 34(Tue) Found 3 Fed 3
Seeded the tanks with Cyclop-eeze/Oyster Egg mix at 11:30 PM,
- LateForDinner: 12:30 found and fed a shrimp leg. Only saw arms but they looked much longer than I thought and almoste missed him thinking it was a brissel wrom.
- SittingBull: was a no show today
- Cassy: 11:30 PM Found her sprawled out on the wall and grabbed the camera. Unfortunately the battery was dead. By the time I got the plug-in battery connected she had gone to the back of the tank and by the time I fished out a shrimp, she disappeared altogether. I found "arms" around 6:00 and they took most of the shrimp from the pipette.
- Sam another no show
- Hepzibah: finally came out around 4:00 AM and was coaxed to take the pipette (literally, I had to retrieve it later). She did not extract all the shrimp leg and I fed her again at 6:00 AM with a softer food.

Day 35(Wed) Found 2 fed 2
- LateForDinner: no show
- SittingBull: Fed, Appears to have moved back to the right side
- Cassy: no show
- Sam: found and fed around 4:00 AM
- Hepzibah: no show

Day 36(Thu)Found 3 fed 1
- LateForDinner: found but not fead
- SittingBull: Fed, confirmed move to right side
- Cassy: no show
- Sam: found 4:00 AM hunting at the top of the aquarium (may have been hunting a crab I found in the sump and place in the tank earlier). Disappeared when I returned with food.
- Hepzibah: no show

 

[DWhatley]

The only cooperating octo for photo attempts tonight was Hepzibah. She is the smallest and is the one in the sump. She is also the one I can find and feed most easily. When I put a little cyclop-eeze/oyter egg mix in the tank she will troll upside down to feed and then come to the wall and readily takes what I offer. Tonight I switched from frozen mysis to shore shrimp and the two that fed took them with gusto (still have several hours to try to find and feed the other three). I did manage a photo but please keep in mind that there is no ambient light. I have the flashlight sitting over the tank and can't even tell if the little octo is in the target frame. Because of the lighting (or lack of it), I cannot use the zoom but do have the camera set to highest resolution so even in the cropped image you can see something of a size idea from the smallish shore shrimp she is eating.

Cassy (Mama Cass) came out about 1:30 and was sprawled out on the overflow box wall. I had tried to tempt her out of where I think she hides without success earlier. She is SOOOO much larger than the rest. She had no trouble with the pipette tonight and I had hoped she would stay on the wall with her food but when I turned around to reach for the camera, she disappeared. Her mantle is about the size of the shore shrimp Hepzibah is eating.

Tried offering Hepzibah another shrimp since she stayed on the wall after eating but she wanted nothing to do with more food.

Another of the peppermint shrimp spawned and unfortunately jumped the net. Located LateForDinner again, CHASING the loose pep. He took the shore shrimp when the peppermint avoided him. I still want to retrap the shrimp but am much more comfortable with it being loose.

Sam showed up at about 5:30 AM and avoided attempts to pipette feed. It took a lot of chasing but ultimately he came around the LR and became interested in the pipette offering. He is not as big as Cassy but still well larger than the other three. If size is an indicator, Sam is Samantha and Hebzibah Henry but only time and a lot of luck will tell.

 

[Shrimpy Brains]

Wow, it's so awesome that you still have some inklets! At what point, do you think you are assured they will survive?

 

[Lmecher]

Great photo D

 

[MAKOOKAM]

wow...looks like a shore shrimp with tentacles! Thanks for the photo.

 

[DWhatley]

At what point, do you think you are assured they will survive?

Shrimpy, I don't know but my best guess is when they feed regularly on table shrimp and fiddler crab (hence my delight at them switching to shore shrimp). Nancy lost one at 4 months but did not know it was in the the tank and thinks it may have survived if they had know it was alive an been able to feed it regularly. I think I still lost a merc later than this (but not much) with the second brood (I can't remember for sure and that may have been Wiley who showed up later). I am really flying by the seat of my pants and trying to document as much as possible.

Additionally, there is the potential issue with having two in each of two tanks and predation. I am still debating on the next step. At this point I intend to keep two in the split tank and will likely put up the barrier at the point they can no longer pass through. Pie in the sky ideally (and subject to change), I would keep SittingBull and LateForDinner together and hope for a male female pair. My less than 50% instincts suggest these may both be males but since they have chosen to separate on their own these are the two I will try. Cassy will take Puddles tank by herself and Hepzibah the livingroom, smaller tank at the point I worry about her escapting the open sump. This leaves Sam (if Cassy does not kill him as they grow). Depending on el Diablo's longevity and Linda's tank availability, Sam will go to Linda. All of this is conjecture and predicated on them all surviving and a lot of other factors but that is my very loose plan, subject to change at anytime.

MAKOOKAM, she stayed on the wall after the flashes but I will not be overly comfortable that the flash did not upset her until she returns tonight. Just hunting SittingBull with a white light (my bad) kept her from taking the shrimp. The other difference between the cuttles and these are that these are nocturnal so they are doubley sensative to light. Interestingly, they feed a different times. I only see Sam just before sun up where LateForDinner is usually out early evening and early morning while SittingBull seems to wander about after 2:00 AM. I plan to start taking better time checks on each.

 

[DWhatley]

So far (1:00 AM) no sign of Hepzibah (unusual) but the last time she disappeared for a few days was when I put sea lettuce (and hopefully accompanying pods) in the sump. I added pods to the sump today from some of my other tank filters so she may be hunting them and not coming for the easy meal.

I have been telling Neal how big Cassy is and got him out of bed to see her tonight. Somehow she looked smaller than my descriptions but he saw LateForSupper earlier and could at least see that Cassy was a lot larger.

Still hunting for Sam but he typically has not shown until just before sunrise.

 

[Nancy]

I know this is hard to do, but could you estimate the size of the mantle in inches or mm? Just an estimate.

You know, some sellers on EBay ship little briareus hatchlings out at this young age. The NRCC always wanted to wait until 3 months before selling any of their bimacs, to see that they were well established.

I don't know why my little briareus died, but it wasn't for lack of food. I even started feeing her, leaving a piece of shrimp which was gone the next moring. My water parameters were OK - it was a 30 gallon tank. I read something John Forsythe wrote about stress, and I think she may have died of stress. She was very reclusive never to have showed herself in 4 months, and the tank was in the kitchen, very visible, and we knew how to look for an octopus. However, there were plenty of places to hide in the live rock.

I had a larger tank ready, but she would have been very hard to catch so I decided to wait a bit. I have always worried that this was the wrong decision.

Nancy

 

[DWhatley]

Nancy,
I'll make length guesses but they are be pretty useless without girth since they will elongate their mantles. I can kind of compare them by saying Cassy is twice the size of the two in the brood tank in that she is twice the girth and has a longer mantle and arms. Sam is about 3/4 her size and Hepzibah the smallest of the lot. So if I guestimate Cassy's mantle as 1 cm (3/8") with an arm span of 8 cm (3") the Brood tank monkeys would be about half that. I don't want to have the opportunity to get better measurements and I could be off by a lot since I am eyeballing these guys using a red flashlight and they don't stay still long. Cassy has been prone to spreading out on the wall when she is ready for food so that is my best guess.

I don't think a thirty would be all that small for a 4 month old but configuration (length vs height) might make a difference (I probably should go back and review CaptFish's thread for sizing expectations over the next month but I don't think he found her until 3-4 months either). KaySoh, SueNami and Kooah essentially lived in one side of the split tank until they were fairly large (they could explore at any time though and the water volume with the sump is close to 100 gallons total). At one month, these guys are still very small.

 

[Nancy]

I suddenly remembered something that helped me when I had the briareus hatchlings. It was a chart put together by John Forsythe, of brareus hatchlings at various points of their development. He had photos of specimins of various ages lined up to make the chart.

CephBase is no longer accessible, but I did copy some information from that chart. He says a juvenile briarus at 2 months has a mantle of 10-12mm (about 1/2 inch) and the armspread iis 60mm (2 1/2 inches). So, your largest hatchling may be a little big for her age, which is good.

The configuration of my 30 gallon was good, not too high, and Little Pod had plenty of swimming room.

Nancy

 

[DWhatley]

I feel pretty sure that tank size was not a problem at 4 months (but would have been by 7 months). I am going to go looking for that chart!!! That would be most helpful information. Neal has a theory that the amount of food first consumed in the first few days may set up their lifetime appetite and with Cassy being so much larger and having all the pods and Cyclop-eeze to herself (and maybe a sibbling or two) would add antecdotal evidence to that thought.

When I found LateForDinner tonight, I first thought that what I was seeing could not be little octopus arms coming up from the LR because they were way too long. I think they have experienced a "growth spurt" but I did not get a good look at him. Possibly the switch to shore shrimp and table shrimp legs is contributing.

 

[DWhatley]

I found this abstract while trying to locate that chart:

Fatal penetrating skin ulcers in laboratory-reared octopuses

Abstract
Young Octopus joubini and O. briareus (35 to 60 days old) that were being reared in high-density groups for biomedical studies developed skin ulcers, whereas octopuses reared in individual containers in the same culture system were disease-free. The ulcers first affected the epidermis of the mantle, and then penetrated downward through the dermis and underlying muscle tissue. Four stages of ulceration were observed. Untreated octopuses with ulcers always died, usually within 4 days. Five species of bacteria were isolated from ulcers: Vibrio alginolyticus, V. damsela, Pseudomonas stutzeri, and Aeromonas caviae from O. joubini; and V. parahaemolyticus, V. damsela, and P. stutzeri from O. briareus. Bacteria were found during all stages of the ulceration. Healthy O. joubini were infected experimentally with four species of bacteria, and V. alginolyticus produced skin ulcers within 2 days. The ulceration was treated with nifurpirinol, and complete healing of the skin occurred within 2 months. The ulcers were probably species-specific because O. maya and O. bimaculoides that were reared in the same culture systems were not affected. The cause of the ulceration was probably an increase in contact among crowded octopuses that produced skin abrasions which were invaded by opportunistic bacteria.

I remember Roy posting something similar with a group of blue rings and I think one of the vibro viruses was found but I don't think they were able to save any that became infected.

Part of the big importance here is that they raised briareus TOGETHER for some 60 days!

I also found this data
Temperature (c): 25
Max Adult Size: 5700
Hatchling WW (mg): 100
Hatchling ML (mm): 7.0
Overall Growth Rate (% BW/d) Exponential Phase: 6.0
Overall Growth Rate (BW/d) Logarithmic Phase: 2.7
No. WW Doublings Exponential Phase: 9.5
Size at end of Exponential Phase (g): 58
Duration of Exponential Phase (d) : 105
Estimated Life Span(mo): 12
Life Span in Exponential Phase (%): 35
No Eggs/Brood: 300-700
No Eggs/g BW: 0.88
Egg Length (mm): 12-13
Duration of Egg Development (d): 55-75
Egg Development as % of life span: 18

I am guessing a critical point will be the transition out of the Exponential growth stage at about 105 days (3-4 months)

 

[Nancy]

Finally I am able to post a photo of Little Pod. My "My Photos" folder was crashing every time I tried to enter it.

As you can see, she was fairly large at 4 months (with no skin lesions).

Nancy