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Tkong,
Do you know the originating body of water? I looked at the last photo first and thought Caribbean vulgaris but the acclimation pictures would make me think it is something else.
 
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DWhatley;n338726 said:
Tkong,
Do you know the originating body of water? I looked at the last photo first and though Caribbean vulgaris but the acclimation pictures would make me think it is something else.
yea i asked the lfs people and they didnt know
 
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I just can't give a good guess. The first two photos make me think nocturnal dwarf but the last looks like a different animal and I can't blow it up to look closely at the eyes. In the cell photo, the arms look too thick for a dwarf and the eyes less protruding but that may simply be an artifact from the camera. The red coloration would point more toward a dwarf but the arm:mantle ratio does not look like Macropus and the mantle is too fat. There is a possibility of O. mercatoris but it looks more robust (again this may be an artifact of the camera and the lack of something known to compare it with. The bug-eye look in the first two would still point to some kind of dwarf.
 
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I would pretty much rule out O. mercatoris from the coloration and would not rule out O. vulgaris but can feel good about that call because the eyes look to prominent (but can appear that way at times) . I suspect an Indonesian animal but mostly because I can't comfortably ID it with the Caribbeans I am most familiar with. More photos, descriptions of the coloration and behavior might get us somewhere eventually. Larger images in you hi res might also help to look at the suckers, siphon and eyes closely.
 
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heres a link to all the photos i took. Behavior wise he is very shy and is completely nocturnal. Until tonight, I always thought he would only be out after 12pm but today i went to check around 9 and he was out and about. His colors are mainly a dark red with brown patches on his arms. a
 
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I am afraid I have no confidence in making an educated guess. Red is most typical of the Macropus complex and a few dwarfs. The arms are not long enough for the Macropuses we usually see from Indonesia. I would guess that this one is not overly young (< 3 months) because the skin does not have the transparency I normally notice in an animal under a couple of months but I don't see the gray coloring I associate with an animal into senescence. It is far too active to be an O. mercatoris. If it is Caribbean, there is the possibility of O. joubini but we have never quite confirmed an ID on one (most that are listed this way are actually O. mercatoris). You might ask your LSF if he knows if this is an import or a US acquisition. If you can confirm US, O. joubini would be my guess.

The first two weeks (or so) never seem to be good examples of how the animal will behave after they are fully acclimated (usually about a month). Age also seems to change their time out and about as well. All the animals I have kept and known to be under about 4 months have been very recluse (including those born in their tanks) until somewhere between 4 and 5 months. Most seem to come out more as they age and even my Macropuses (3:00 AM active) came out with some AM daylight near the very end of their lives.

A word about that heater. Octopuses don't seem to understand about "hot" and will burn themselves badly. Jacques Cousteau was the first to publicly recognize this (that I know of) but I have seen a recent research paper mention the same about extreme cold. A heater should not be place where they can touch them (I know he is in a critter keeper at the moment but when you release him, isolate or remove the heater. ). Also, I hope it is truly submersible. I have gone to the remote temp controls (and metal heaters) to avoid problems with shorts and breakage.
 
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