Orange - O. briareus Teacher Kim's New Octopus!

Moving on.... I think that maybe the new octopus is a female that has mated. My husband, Kevin, is going to put his go-pro up on the tank tonight!! YAY! Hopefully tomorrow we will have something to really study as far as her mantel and arms. If she's going to lay eggs, I will do my best to keep the young alive as long as possible, but will need lots of advice! :smile: To be continued tomorrow..... :smile:
 
:lol: Slow down :wink:
The mantle is too small at this point to expect brooding, it simply looked odd in the one photo. You cannot tell visually if she has mated as the eggs are fertilized (we think) at the time they are laid with sperm that is stored until it is ready to be used. Typically, you will see the back of the mantle widen and she will have difficulty controlling it. During this time she will clean out a den (sometimes one she has used, sometimes another). Often you will see prebrood females go between two dens, "deciding" which is the best location. During this process, she will start dragging small pieces of substrate (shells, rocks etc) to the new den to block it from invasion( sometimes the small pieces of substrate are not so small :roll:).

I saw your note on Yeti's journal but Yeti was much younger when she arrived. Better examples might be Kooah (female with viable eggs), SueNami (male) or Kaysoh (female with infertile eggs)

For other journals, go to the sticky at the top of the journal forum marked Lists of our octopuses and scroll down to the more current years then click on the animal names next to animals labled O. briareus. Here is a direct link to the 2012 list.

As far a viewing the pictures, if you will click on the image in the post, it will get bigger. If your browser is set to resize the images, it will be no larger than the original but as big as the screen will display to show the entire picture. If the original image is larger, clicking the image again will size it to the original huge image. I am not sure what you are doing to post the photos twice :biggrin2:
 
Oh good! Am really hoping she will be around for awhile! Actually, am interested in Yeti to get ideas of possible behaviors, etc... that I might expect from this one since they are same type. Am going to check the ones you mentioned also! I'm very excited about the fact that she is so much larger than Ziggy and more active during day, even if it's just arms! LOL! Can't wait to see her come out and hopefully start interacting in future!

Thanks for help with pictures. I have no idea why those pics showed up double! :hmm: I have go pro set up right now so am hoping to see some activity from her in morning! It will record for 4 hours straight! Will report tomorrow!
 
Note to husband: :mad: you can't get video of an octopus if you only have 10 minutes of time left to record. You must first delete old videos! LOL ! With that said, we have over 4 hours of recording space for tonight, so I am going to cross my fingers. I was so disappointed this morning!!
 
:smile:Second note to husband: If you turn camera on at 8 in the morning, the batterywill go dead before the middle of the night!! LOL! Tried again last night! Hopefully we will find something on gopro today.

My daughter, Casi, saw the Octopus (soon to be named) twice last night. First time was at around 10pm!! She said it was moving around above live rock in center of tank. She was excited about the very long arms and size!! :smile: She said when she bent down to look closer, it actually made eye contact with her and then shot cloudy water at her from it's head (would that be correct???) and went down into it's den. Wish I'd seen it! LOL, but at least someone did!

Will be posting pictures of the kids' funeral for Ziggy on her journal later this morning. It was very touching. My thanks go out to "D" for offering to send us one of her octos so we could have the funeral. (Excellent learning experience for young children!)
 
Diego was mailed on on Tuesday (actually put in the mailbox on Monday but I forgot there was no mail service).

The "cloudy" water it shot was ink. If you see inking, you should change out at least some of the water. Usually the ink is thin and a protein skimmer will handle it but it can coat the gills and cause breathing issues and death. This is usually more of a problem in shipping than in the tank but I recommend changing a couple of gallons out today if you have a skimmer, at least 5 if you don't.

If Casi saw it at 10:00 PM, watch for this to be a regular occurrence for hunting. Move very slowly around the tank when you see it. Waving or some other acknowledgment from a distance initially is a better bet than approaching the tank as it appears this species is quite far sighted and can spook (and then ink) easily from close up.

Octopuses are definitely build oddly compared to other animals. In addition to its brain being donut shaped with the esophagus running through the middle, the head is just below the eyes more or less between the eyes and the arms. The "bag" part of an octopus is its body (where all the organs reside) and is called the mantle.
 
Thanks for giving me a lesson in where octopus body parts are located! For some reason I hadn't come across anything about it while reading! They are definitely built backwards, but totally makes sense when you look at them!

Kids are so excited about Diego! They keep asking when he will be here! Can't wait to post a pic of them with him! Here's a quick funny... we had Ziggy's funeral yesterday, so one of my 3 year olds comes running in this morning and the first thing out of her mouth was "Teacher Kim, is Ziggy still dead today?" Later she came back and asked "Are you sure Ziggy's still dead?" Too cute.

Oh yes, everyone, please don't laugh too hard, but the children named this octopus "Orange"! I know, I know, but it was better than "Lizard" or "Letter A"!!! :roflmao: What can I say!

Will try GoPro one last time tonight! Hope it will finally work!
 
Help! Am worried! This morning when I got up, Orange had moved a live clam up onto the top of her den! She also had moved two other pieces of rock over to the left of the clam, basically blocking it off completely! to the right she only moved one piece over. Ran GoPro for 3 hours, but of course, missed any activity! The pic shows clam on top and items to our left were shoved into grove!
Is this normal, or might she be getting ready to lay eggs??


 

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It could be that she is just rearranging the tank to her liking. The need a place to hide and be in the dark and if the LR does not provide it, they will improvise. However, it could also mean she is creating a brood den and is typical of pre-brood behavior. All you can do is observe and record. Keeping them is a challenge, sometimes more mental than physical.

I unzipped (extracted) this picture and reattached it so that it is displayed.When you attach a picture, it needs to have the .jpg extension. What you attached is a compressed file in .zip format. It needs to be "extracted", i.e. uncompressed on your computer (this will put it in .jpg format, you cannot just rename it) and then attached to your post. I am unsure why it is in the .zip format but you can PM me with how you are getting the pictures from the camera to your computer to see if I can help with more detailed instructions.
 
Thanks D! I noticed that this pic didn't pop up like others! Honestly, I have no idea what I did differently!! :confused: If I wasn't teaching 5 days a week all day, I'd go take a computer class!! No time though!

I added a bunch more live rock to give her more hiding places. We will see what happens tonight. Will turn the gopro on later tonight to see what we get!

By the way, our goprto is a Hero 2. It takes still photos, a burst of 10 photos in 1 second, time lapse that can be set from every .5 to 60 seconds and it has a self timer. I just read that the battery only lasts for about 2 1/2 hours! So 4 hours of space doesn't mean 4 hours of night time video!! Also, battery takes 1-2 hours to recharge! Good to know when wanting to record in middle of night! LOL!

I found the instructions so if there's anything else you'd like to know, just ask!

Just a last note: Right now I have 2 marine shore shrimp, 2 fiddler crabs, several different types of snails, 2 hermit crabs and one poor peppermint shrimp that will probably be octo food soon! Oh yes, and the 2 live clams from the fish market also! I do know that she ate another fiddler crab last night because she threw out the trash this morning! Too funny!! She has taken 2 thawed fiddler crabs into her den, only to toss them back out! I tried a piece of scallop today, thinking maybe she'd like something different. Nope, she wouldn't even take it inside! She just picked it up and moved it away from her enterance! Until tomorrow...... :smile:
 
We finally got a short video of Orange moving around in the live rock sticking her arms out exploring. There was only one quick time when she came all the way out and then went back into the rock quickly. Since this was proof that she is alive and well, along with leftover food, I am going to wait 3 or 4 days before using the gopro again. Will probably use it tomorrow night.

She is definitely into rearranging everything in her tank! Each morning I notice things in different places! Am anxious to see what we get on gopro tomorrow night!.
 
OK, it's been 8 days since I last posted. I decided to leave Orange completely alone and just let her be herself. I quit setting up the gopro because all we would get were a few glimpses of her arms! I also have turned all lights off at night in case that helps her out. At this point we are guessing that she is a she, but not positive yet. It's been looking like maybe she was going to lay eggs, but..... not yet!

I finally gave up this morning and just had to move rocks!! At the time I wasn't sure if she was even still alive, except that some morning's it looks like things have been moved around. Well, I very carefully moved the rocks and there she was!!!! Big and really healthy looking!!! Her mantle looked totally normal (as far as I could tell with my limited knowledge) and she was a really pretty molted dark brown/cream, etc... coloring! Just beautiful! And she looked so big. I actually think she may have grown! Am beginning to wonder if she is so smart that she was avoiding the gopro because she was so new! I am not going to set it up again for at least a few more days.

She was sitting on the sand and didn't seem afraid at all. I put my hand by one of her arms and she briefly touched it and then slowly moved under another piece of rock. Also, she took a thawed fiddler crab, so we will see if she eats it. I gave her one the other day and she didn't throw it out of her den like in the beginning. Later I saw left overs, but haven't been able to account for one of my live ones yet either, so we will see. I tried to take pics, but they didn't turn out good enough to post.:sad:

Would like to end this post by asking if, since it's been 8 days and her mantle looks normal, maybe she hasn't mated? And if not, can someone give me an idea of how big she might get in inches! LOL!!! Am looking into possible getting a larger tank for her if she's going to be around for a while. :smile:
 
Kim,
Mating and brooding are unrelated. A female octopus will mate and store the sperm until it is time to brood but she will lay eggs and brood even if she has not mated. This is most unfortunate for an aquarium keeper as it shortens the active live we have with them. I tried removing the known infertile eggs from one of my animals (LittleBit) in hopes that she would discontinue the brood behavior (amounting to a month or more of sequestered time). Initially, it appeared to have an impact but only for a day or two and then she returned to the eggless brood den.
 

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