New Aculeatus(?) Journal - Octopus Prime!

Curiosity- Roy and I are currently writing a paper on this behavior in the wild. I can't go into the details of it now, but it' has a couple of interesting possible uses.
 
a few updates--

I have been very concerned about octopus prime this week. he seems to be out of his den for more of the day than usual, yet spends most of that time in one or two favorite spots on the glass, with his arms curled up looking a little pale. He still does flash and change colors regularly in response to activity occuring near him, but he just doesn seem like his normal "constantly exploring self," and i realize that these are early signs of the end of his life.

I put a fiddler crab in a few days ago (he usually eats 1, sometimes 2 a day) and another one in yesterday, seeing no trace of the first. But now i see that neither have been eaten. Octopus prime is currently curled up very small on a rock on side of the tank opposite his den, sleeping. very disconcerting.

On an unrelated note, i put in 25 mysid shrimp i had ordered from aquaculturestore as a treat a couple weeks ago. He vorciously ate 6-10 of them right away and gradually seemed to lose interest. in the subsequent days he would take occasional swats at them but not try too hard to catch any. Now there are still a few swimming around, occasionally bumping right into him! For a while he was clearly only interested in the fiddler crabs, but as i said, now he seems to have very low appetite all together

I know OP's gender has been up in the air, but this kind of non-nesting behavior would rule out a senescing female, correct?

I do realize that water quality may also be an issue, especially if a few shrimp have died and decayed. Also, lending to the water quality theory, last week I awoke and saw that he had inked (probably in response to me violently swatting the alarm clock!).

i had never seen him ink before, but i netted it right away and changed 20% of the water volume later that day.

any speculations are more than welcome

here is a picture of him, relatively normal last week:
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and one of him today, hiding in a rock, looking pale and asleep, yet far from his own den...
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I have been seeing similar actions with Octane (Hummelincki - also showing a drab gray that is not normal) and am also worried. I have found that changing out double his normal water change seems to perk him up (always 0's on ammonia and nitrite but nitrate is a constant battle) and he goes back to acting normally. I suspect he may be over eating sometimes and his age shows the effects of this indulgence (i.e. probably is the beginning of sesenence but not necessarily impending death). Please update a bit more often so that we might parallel the behavior.

Thanks,
 
i definitely will try to update more frequently. finals and trying to graduate have sucked up most of my free time, but thankfully all that is coming to a close :smile:

just thought i'd throw up some pictures of how my food orders come from aquaculturestore.com.. long live paul sachs!

octofood 1: fiddler crabs
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octofood 2: mysid shrimp
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i am getting more certain that OP is a male. i was watching the video on Roy and Christine's work and i definitely notice a lot of skunk-stripe moments, as well as a constantly curled 3rd right arm.
 
When I saw Octopus Prime's name, I couldn't stop laughing for two whole minutes :lol: Thats a good one, very creative. He has really nice coloration. How big is he so far?
 
Nice pics of food! How large are the mysids? I've ordered shore shrimp from him, at about an inch each. Good octo food and catching them provides enrichment.

Nancy
 
the mysids are all between around 1/2" and 1" i put all 25 in at once and though he was initially very excited and grabbed as many as possible, he seems to have stopped eating them (they occasionally bump right into his head, and he just shoos them away). i can count 6 right now just glancing at the tank.
 
octopus prime continues to act unusually. He spends a lot of time curled up as small as possible on the glass (currently in a place ive never seen him hanging out before).

he's eating maybe one fiddler crab every other day, and there always seems to be one out crawling near him, not to mention the mysid shrimp that are still frolicking about.

lethargy aside, he seems more tense and iratable than usual too, and the curled 3rd arm has been very prominent. today he inked at me again when i entered the room. that's twice now within 2 weeks, it having -never- happened until now. this time the ink was less viscous and it dissolved very quickly. i will consider doing a water change later tonight in lieu of that.

poor guy doesnt seem well. im sticking to my water changes (doing 20% each week rather than 10%) and hoping for the best.
 
How big is Octopus Prime? He looks pretty small in the pictures. Just throwing this out there but is it possible he's just bored with nothing new to explore. My aculeatus was very curious and loved exploring everything. Try giving him something new it couldn't hurt and just might help.:cool2:
 
When Octane has acted strangely, I immediately do a 5 gallon water change, no questions asked (then do my normal one on the weekend). His water has never shown detectable ammonia or nitrites. It could be temperature or O2 (I should NOT have a problem with O2 with all the sump exposure and his odd behaviors are not at any specific intervals) but I notice a back to normal posturing every time. I cant' give a solid reason for the difference (it could be something as simple as over eating and the water change has no effect). I have done this with the Mercs as well (almost never needed with them however). My nitrates do run between 20 and 30 ppm but don't drop with the extra 5 gallon wc.

"Try giving him something new it couldn't hurt and just might help."

It is possible that just the extra attention snaps him out of his "funk"
 

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