Regis's Journal

Do you know where he came from, at least which ocean? Check out other journals of mercs, and compare to Izzy who I believe was a boki. What times is it most active? If it is nocturnal, you can try putting red lights on at night to encourage a little more action. I'd leave my red lights on all night so there wasn't a "darkest time" of night when they'd come out after I went to bed. Even still, with mercs ant the boki, I never saw much of them until after 11 pm or so. Try and be patient with the id, some octos go without id at all!
 
Cute video but not enough to tell anything about ID. I would have IDed the digueti as a merc from the photo though. The color is only a little help in most cases. Here at post 114 is a pretty good representation of a young mercatoris. Of those of us who have raised and journaled them, Greg has the majority of the best shots but you can scan the journals for mercatoris in the title to hunt for others (including mine on Trapper, Trapper's children and Trapper's grandchildren) but the merc's are hard to photograph because of their noctural behavior.

If you can turn the lights off in the room around 9:00 (on a regular basis), you might start seeing more of Regis around 11:00. This was the earliest I could manage with my tank in a windowed room. You will not be able to have the lights on to observe. If you can setup a red light over the tank, this has worked well for most of us but the photography suffers.
 
sedna;140900 said:
Do you know where he came from, at least which ocean? Check out other journals of mercs, and compare to Izzy who I believe was a boki. What times is it most active? If it is nocturnal, you can try putting red lights on at night to encourage a little more action. I'd leave my red lights on all night so there wasn't a "darkest time" of night when they'd come out after I went to bed. Even still, with mercs ant the boki, I never saw much of them until after 11 pm or so. Try and be patient with the id, some octos go without id at all!

I have no idea which ocean he came from, I'd as the LFS where I got him, but their guess is a good as mine (can only rely on one person in there to actually know anything :banghead:) He comes out most when I don't see him so for sure when I am sleeping, but if i wake him up during the day he comes and says whats up (just discovered this yesterday on my way to work). my tank has moon lights and his critter cage is under those so if i do ever catch him out i'll be able to see him :biggrin2:
 
ok, kept reading about varys' babies and I guess the head covering thing is common with the mercatoris. so as of now, except for his smaller size and seemingly different shape, i'm going to assume that's what he is, definitely not a boki.

I went to Whole Foods and picked up a piece of squid, small neck clam and a crab claw. IDK help me out i've only actually seen him the one time in the video and he played hide and seek while doing the arm thing the other day, but thats it. I need to make sure he is eating (besides ghost shrimp) HELP !!!!!!!

this little guy has really grown on me

I'll try and get his lazy butt up today for more pics idk how tho
 
All of our octopuses have eaten fiddler crabs (I disable the large claw on the males). The mercs would take a freshly killed shore shrimp from a stick placed in front of their den. I also added FROZEN Cyclop-eeze to the tank daily even after they were large enough to eat more solid food.

Yes, the arms over the eyes is always seen with the mercs but I don't know if other species do this as well.
 
Simple answer, yes. What we call shore shrimp are typically Palaemonetes vulgaris and most of what you will see listed as glass or ghost shrimp are Paleomonetes sp (sp meaing the species is unknown). Shore shrimp are actually a brackish water shrimp that can tolerate full salt. There is question as to whether or not freshwater shrimp and crayfish are an acceptable diet as there does not appear to be a major content difference between these and the saltwater cousins (most shrimp in the grocery are farm raised as freshwater shrimp and the frozen mysis are all freshwater). A major advantage of keeping with the known safe route is that the saltwater varieties will survive in an aquarium until eaten where the freshwater species may not.
 
As far as I know, all crab is sold cooked because it deteriorates so quickly, so is not so good. Stick with frozen shrimp. It's expensive, but then your octopus doesn't eat so much.

You can also try small pieces of fish, but I never had much luck with that. Scallops are better (and Whole Foods doesn't treat theirs with any preservatives). So just experiment.

The shore shrimp (live) are good but hard to catch for some species. Live fiddlers are loved by almost all octopuses.


Nancy
 

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