o. briareus II ! even smaller then the last one total impulse purchase

[corpusse]

He has gone completely undercover. Since spotting him on august 4th in the rock with a flashlight I have not seen him since. Red flashlight no help. Night morning ect. This was the expected behavior but it's interesting I got a few weeks of interaction in before this.

 

[corpusse]

The slow road to interaction begins. I saw him early this morning and fed him a fiddler via tweezers. He also grabbed my arm for about 10-20 seconds but had to contend with the crab and let go. His new den is on the opposite side of the original one and there is a huge pile of crab shells surrounding it

 

[DWhatley]

Interesting, I have not seen a midden with any of the tank kept animals and wondered if it was the tank (circulation and cleaning) or that only some of the larger animals made junk piles.

 

[ieatfalalfel]

i seem to remember in octopus: the oceans intelingent invertabrate by james b wood, roland anderson, and jennifer mather that only osme octopus species will have middens and that some may make them but they are swept by the current or scavanged

 

[DWhatley]

I know O. vulgaris is supposed to be located by its midden piles as well as the GPO but I have kept several O. briareus and not seen any sign of a discard pile so it may be an individual octopus habit (or my Koralias blow away/scavengers remove any piles that would accumulate between tank cleanings).

 

[corpusse]

The shell pile is just outside the den. The den is on the side of the tank where there is little flow to move them around. The overflow is on the side and it's in a really awkward spot for a photo.. At this early age they really seem to be ambush predators waiting for the crabs or whatever to come to them. Once he gets older and more confident it's a different story but I have seen crabs go by unharmed but when they venture a few inches closer they are dinner.

The last couple mornings I've got him grabbing my hand but won't come all the way out of the den. I have to stand on a salt bucket to reach my hand beside the den and then can't see but he grabs for 30 seconds or so then lets go. Another month or 2 he should start venturing out, at least with the lights off.

 

[corpusse]

Poor guy could not figure out how to get a crab out of an open jar. He made half a dozen attempts and with the lights soon coming on I gave him another crab. Which he pounced on before i could even turn the camera to him.

He is still very shy but he did grab my arm a couple of times and stay relatively in the open. I took a couple of pictures and some videos which are below :

 

[ieatfalalfel]

It seems as if he cant tell there is a jar there at all, perhaps you could try a shorter jar? Or you could tilt it towards the octopus?

 

[DWhatley]

I have made comments about this species seeming to be the "dumb blond" of the octo world but this little guy has not done a lot of hunting yet and the idea of having to go around something to get a crab in plain sight is not intuitive. I wonder how humans would react in the same situation.

 

[corpusse]

I'm working on getting him more comfortable before going back to the jars.

Today for the first time he completely left the rock and swam to the middle of the tank to envelop my hand with tweezers and a fiddler for bait. First time I got a good look at him and he is BIG. Growing really well which is a good sign, hopefully he continues his acclimation with human interaction.

 

[DWhatley]

Even though we could see Little Bit every day for the first couple of months, we only saw eyes and a little of her head. When we finally saw all of her we could not believe how much she had grown right in front of our eyes.

 

[corpusse]

Shot this, this morning.

 

[corpusse]

Dropped the crab before I could lure him out

 

[iAlex]

What time do you feed him?

 

[corpusse]

Usually in the morning, before lights come on.