Little Occy ID

5bucks

Hatchling
Registered
Joined
Feb 22, 2011
Messages
2
Hi,

I found this little Occy while snorkelling round some reefs here (South East of South Australia) and I brought him home to put in my marine tank. We poked him around at first with the blunt end of a skewer, because we thought he was a Blue Ring, but after a few colour and pattern changes, there we no visible blue rings (which is why we kept him). Can you tell me what kind of octopus he might be?? It's about 6-7cm long (from tip of head to end of tentacles) and is a light brown colour, and turns dark brown when prodded. My husband is a proffessional Rock Lobster fisherman, and said he's never seen such a small Octopus, the ones they catch come up in the lobster pots and so are pretty big and have usually eaten all the lobsters!

Thanks, Tracy.
 

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I can be no help with an ID but was curious if you saw any kind of black ring close to the eyes when you aggravated it (there would be one on each side but nowhere else). At this size it looks so much like one I have been trying to ID that it shocked me when I saw the photo. However, the one I have came from the Caribbean in North America so there is not much of a chance they are related but I am sure you can see the resemblelance and why it grabbed my attention.
 
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OMG, I think one of my Sea Stars have eaten him! I have 4 tanks, one with Port Jackson Sharks, one with Rock Lobsters and large hermit crabs, One with my Seahorses, and the other with teeny hermit crabs, sea urchins and sea stars. I chose the latter to put the Occy in with as I thought the Lobster and Sharks may have eaten him, and I didn't want him to try and eat my Seahorses, and this morning he's not there! I'm devastated!!
 
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It is unlikely that the sea stars ate him. The only star we have seen to be a potential problem (then again, you have way more dangerous animals than we have in this hemisphere) was a Bahama star and it is unclear if it trapped the octo and then used its stomach acids to kill it or if it had died and it was cleaning up.

More likely, it has escaped the tank, is in the sump, overflow or other exit point or, most likely, is hiding in the substrate (rock work etc). We keep a thread going called Find the Ceph in This Photo Game for photos of them hiding in sight of the camera. One current octopus keeper started tearing his tank down, positive that his octopus had died, only to find it happily hiding in the live rock but he did not see it simply by looking under the rocks. It was up inside a rock he was transferring.
 
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