[Octopus]: Mama Cass - O.briareus (tank hatched)

Very good videos of your beautiful briareus. To me, they are the most graceful of the octopuses.
What are the corals in your tank? What are those orange disks? The color is beautiful - I need some of those!

Nancy
 
D she is growing to be such a charmer. I could watch her move across the glass all day :biggrin2: Her coloring in the first video reminds me of Ollie. I miss him. I'd love to have another O. briareus one day, they are so beautiful.
 
It is still very hard to tell what kind of personality Cassy will have. At times, I think she is going to become an aggressive animal but that may be more her shyness than any real aggressive traits. However, I never feel like Tatanka might become aggressive. Perhaps it is because Cassy is quite dark most of the time where Tank wears much lighter coloration.

The common name for the orange/brown zoes is Sun polyp (not to be confused with the hard coral with the same common name). I have found these to do well in octo tanks. They transplant and adhear quickly, have an undetectble sting, don't multiply wildly and are attractive. I have some that are probably 10 years old or more (inherited) and some (the ones you see in the video and pictures) that are only a couple of years old. The oldest ones have disks a good 3" across where the ones you see are only about 1.5 inches in diameter. The amount of white striping varies on their position in the water column and light exposure. Kara (www.sealifeinc.net) finds them from time to time (the newer ones are from her) but they are not currently listed as in stock.
 
Never heard them called sun polyps. I always refer to them as Palythoa grandis. Very nice none the less.

Judging by the rough estimate of your fiddler crab sizes your guy is MUCH bigger then mine. Maybe close to twice the size. Hopefully when he grows to this size he will be equally as bold.
 
Thanks for the scientific name. I am not good about learning any of the official names for the small collection of corals that I keep and common names are often used for more than one coral (kind of a brown octopus thing :biggrin2:)

They have really grown this last month (or maybe it is just that we are seeing more of them so we can see something of their size). I keep wanting to repeat one of the photos of when they were first born for comparison :biggrin2:. Since both of the "twins" are appearing more and more, I suspect you will see the same thing so it will be good to have comparitive notes as yours starts to appear.

Cassy is taking food at the 11:00 PM feeding as well as her earlier time but is not as zealous with the attack so she is hungry enough to eat an additional snack but not showing the hunger CaptFish saw with Legs (yet anyway).
 
No trips to the glass but she was awake around 5:00PM and inquisitive. We did several rounds of her reaching up to my wiggling fingers, ducking into the LR then popping back out shortly after disappearing. She went to all three of her favorite peeking out places (left, right and center in the tank) and repeated the inquiries. I don't think she was particularly hungry, just curious. I cleaned the tank wall after I took the videos :roll: and she came out to investigate but decided my arm was too big of an attack target. I always feel it is a good sign when they object to tank cleaning as I think it implies a territorial protection, suggesting that they have taken ownership of their tanks.

I am having a hard time determining if Cassy is mimicing my finger movements or just does not see my finger clearly. I am thinking the former since her eyesight has dramatically improved.


I also had a thought about lighting, water movement and the passing cloud display. Both Cassy and Maya frequently exhibit(ed) the passing cloud where we are hard pressed to catch it in the other tanks. This aquarium has the returns from the sump set up at the top of the water column, one at the front left and the other at the back right and alternated with a SCWD. We alternate the returns on Tanks home but the returns are much lower in the water column and the lighting is somewhat weaker.
 
We are being treated with a nightly dinner (ours) time appearance. Cassy comes fully out into the open at supper time and watches us. We are not quite sure what her motivation is but we get a full passing cloud light show at supper. If we put our hand in the tank she will grab on and pull but she does not seem to be especially hungry and is not overly aggessive (she did disrupt part of the live rock one night) so I am hoping it is curiosity.
 
Both the O.hummelincki and the O.briareus (but not the fully nocturnal Macropus) housed in that tank (see Maya) showed frequent passing cloud displays and I believe it has to do with the routing of the sump return being at the top of the tank (alternating left to right with a SCWD which may or may not be important).
 
Our best film catch is still the second video on post #15 though :biggrin2:
She is coming out every night at supper (ours) and then again around 11:00 and will eat both times. I have not made any real progress toward additional socialization though. She seems curious but when food is not involved she will only reach out to touch and then dive (the only time she moves quickly) down into the live rock. She will pop back up shortly and repeat the sequence for maybe 4 times and then waits for me to leave before coming back out. I still see owl eyes if I try to approach her with my hand (indicating she is trying to look much larger).
 
I think I have been hanging around Terri, Hagar and Kevin too long. I had just cleaned her tank and the particulates gave an odd feeling in the lighting. All I could think of when I watched this video is that it looked like something back in time (the effect is more 3D ish if you can view it at the highest resolution).
The stills made me think of an old magazine or newpaper ad. Something post Jurassic but stll with an odd "aged" feeling
 

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