Pop - A.aculeatus

devi

Blue Ring
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Jun 24, 2009
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I promised I wouldn't buy this, but the shop wasn't very knowledgeable, and I just couldn't let him go to someone who didn't even know what he ate, so I got him. This may be a very stupid move, but he's in my 15g now and I'm picking up a 50g on wednesday with sump which hopefully I can use established media to cycle in a month or so. Please feel free to tell me it was daft because that's what I'm thinking.
But in the meantime, I have an octopus.
Octopus.jpg

He's stunning isn't he? Actually, I'm saying he, but I have no idea, I've been watching the arms and can't see a different one anywhere, don't know if anyone else can?
He has just treated me to the strangest behaviour -
octopus2.jpg

He looks like a spotty frisbee. Any idea what that means? Have I scared him? Or is he just being strange?
 
yeah prob not a good idea to get him without a tank set up yet. but too late now. it is a pretty little thing. keep sending us pictures maybe we can help you determine sex. the colors changing is good. it means he's alert and resposive. hopefully he can stay that way.
i know you don't have a tank set up yet. this is just my recomendation, but i would work towards getting that asap. if your concern is finding the right size and location for your tank, then i highly recomend buying your live rock and putting it in a large (30+ gallons) container with a heater and a powerhead. you can start building up good micro organisms in that water while you still wait for your tank. then put all that rock and water in your tank when you get it. that will at least help a bit. BUT THAT DOES NOT MEAN YOU WONT HAVE TO CYCLE YOUR NEW TANK. YOU WILL.
 
I'm getting my live rock from an established tank at my lfs, so it is already in a decent tank with fish. I'm not looking at not cycling, testing kit is ready to go and I am a stickler for zeros!
However any advice to speed it up is appreciated, he needs to be in the 15g for as short a time as possible.
Unfortunately, I rejected this little guy last week on the advice of dwhatley, until I found out he was being fed on mollys and would be sold to a community tank if I didn't take him. I'm not his ideal owner, but i'm better than the other potentials and I needed to give him a chance.
I'm also trying to seek out any established tanks to salvage anything.
 
If you have extra space in your filter area, put a small sponge in there. It will build up bacteria, much like bioballs would, and eventually would be able to put that in the new tank with the octo and it would limit some of the cycling. Much like cycling a QT tank for a fish.
 
I've got live rock rubble throughout my back chambers which will be moving to the new tank. Hoping that will seed it all quickly along with using mature live rock.
In a more whimsical statement, we have called him pop, in catalan that means octopus and I think is pretty cool. Not sure how to stick his name on the title thingy! Pop was a bit hidden for a while, I've spent most of my evening time with tank and room lights off glaring into the tank and nothing. A hermit gone and a turbo snail, but no knowing if he got them.
Tonight with tank lights on and room lights on, Pop began to rearrange his den, quite happily chucking out rocks he didn't fancy and sneaking in rocks he did. I only saw arms, but I saw all of them moving in and out and grabbing stuff, was so amusing to see him picking up rocks, feeling them, turning them over for a while, then rejecting or accepting on his own values! I wonder what his criteria were?
I'm feeding him live so far but think I'll get a few frozen shrimp in because this would have been the perfect opportunity to offer him something on a feeding stick.
 
The rock rearrangement is suspect that Pop is Poppeta and the mantle looks overly expanded in the photos. This CAN be just to try to look large but with the rock rearrangement, I'll bet otherwise. About how big is its mantle? I am guessing this one is tiny like Espy but fully grown. If so, then likely something in the Abdopus complex but not aculeatus (there are an unknown number - something greater than 5 - of SP's (Espy's :biggrin2:) in this complex.
 
Mantel is rather bloated compared to other peoples pics I guess. Pic one was pretty relaxed, taken while exploring the bag as it entered my tank, all legs wandering, pic 2 I have no idea, it may be a defence posture, or an amusing trick, it was a sudden shape, texture and colour change that lasted a good 30 seconds. He (she?) has a roughly inch long mantel, which is roughly the same in diameter.
On a more practical basis. Are we looking at a large egg species or small? Should I be cancelling the large tank and ordering many smaller ones?
 
Stay with the larger tank for the next one :sad:

All the abdopus we have recorded were small egged species. Just being abdopus does not guarantee it (and she may be something else) but chances are very high. Even if you want to put some effort into the hatchlings, the larger tanks have produced the longest survival for both small and large egg species.

The pattern in the second photo look very much like one that Espy presents but he changes constantly. It is the white circles that made me think this one may be the same tiny species.
 
I've seen arms a few times now but nothing else. Both hermits and a few snails have vanished, along with a few defrosted mussels I stuck in, so seems she's still eating!
We had about a week of 'arms out' at 10pm with tank and room lights on, but that appears to have ceased. Not seen her for 3 days now.
 
The small egg, small octos seem to brood very quickly (not true of the small egg large octos) so if she is brooding you can expect hatchlings in as little as 7 to 10 days.
 
She definitely ate last night as the empty shell of one of my snails is just inside her den, does this mean she's not brooding quite yet? Or could she be? I've stuck half a dozen red leg hermits in today and she instantly stuck an arm out to see what was going on, but a little feel of the rocks and it went back in.

ETA - With no fish in the aquarium for nearly 6 months now, I've had an explosion of pods, all sorts of interesting white crawly things about, when you look at the glass for long enough you suddenly realise it's covered in them. Would this increase the chance of a small period of survival for the babies? I know they won't make adulthood, but I'd like to see them survive as long as possible.
 
The pods might give you a couple of days but if a tank full of pods was an answer for raising the small egg species, we would have captive raised animals. It would be nice to find a simple solution but we don't have a lot of luck with the large egg species and none at all with the small egg. I have read a couple of papers on raising plantonic sea urchins and hope to experiment with some of the ideas from those papers but so far I have not had any small egg hatchlings.

The snail may or may not have been eaten. I have a post that clearly show one of my guys pulling a snail off the wall, keeping it under its webbing, releasing the shell that then showed a very clean, empty inner surface and an hour later the snail was crawling on the wall. She may just be using the shell as a door or barrier. Likewise, swiping at anything moving near the den is behavior we see while guarding eggs. On a rare occasion, a female may come out and hunt and some will accept food initially (the ones that can/will still eat a little usually live a little longer after the eggs hatch. Most females will survive until hatching.
 
Has anyone tried to just have a few baby octos in a pod-covered tank? You could remove 95% of the eggs so there wouldn't be as much competition.
 
I don't remember anyone removing unhatched eggs to minimize the brood size.

We have not identified what the problems are. The general consensus is that food availabilty is not the primary problem but we have not ruled out the type of food. There have been a couple of limited successes feeding newly hatched crabs to cold water species and I would like to try feeding frozen if I can find a quantity next time (regardless of egg size when I have another brood). At some point, over-crowding may be impactive as Roy has seen infection in young blue rings that he associated with touching and Conanny's hatchlings started dieing from "red" marks that we initially thought were bites but the more I thought about it and after not observing similar marks on any of mine I am thinking the marks may have been bacteria related. Martin Moe identified bacteria as a major problem trying to grow out palegic urchins as well. To that end, many of us have split up the broods in to groups of smaller environments but the longest lived in all cases were the ones left in the most water volume.
 

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