Snowball (hummelincki?)

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Well, so far snowball remains in the pot cave and has not moved from it as far as I know. I also installed red, LED lights to check out night viewing because I figured he may be coming out then but I've seen nothing so far. I know he is still alive and well because I see him peering out time to time.

The most interaction I have had with him was this last weekend when we played, I push the shimp in and he pushes the shrimp out. During the game (i guess it was a game) he grabed my finger and held onto it for about 15 seconds or so, I guess he was just curious to what my finger was, he was very gentle and I have to said it was weird feeling. As of now, I know he hasn't eaten any of the crabs in the tank because they are all still alive and I know he isn't hunting when im not around so I have to feed him shrimp, but even then he doesn't seem to eat much of it. Hopefully he will come on out and play some day.
 
Well, I woke up this morning and checked the tank. When i was checking to see if snowball came out, I found her to my suprise under the overhang of a peice of live rock with little eggs she attached to the wall of it (I think they are eggs, not sure though). She wasnt moving at all except breathing so I moved her out of the peice to open ground. Apparently the reason she was rejecting food was because she was brooding and I noticed that her arms look all chewed up, I don't know if she did that to herself or the crabs got to her last night sometime. This really sucks because I never got to see her do anything!!, really a big let down. Right now she is sitting in the open just breathing hard, I don't think she can move.

I placed her on the pot so things will not mess with her while the end comes....Oh well, circle of life, I guess its not so bad because.......tonight she dines in HELL! :cephdevil:
 
Snowball just died, I don't know if she laid eggs for sure after looking at them closer, I really can't get a good view of them because they are under a peice of live rock that is glued in place. From what I understand of it, the eggs are usually unfertalized anyways so I guess its not a big deal. I did a post-mortem photo, I wanted to ask if this was a typical size for a mature hummelincki, if so they seem awfully small. Guess ill have to try and keep one of these guys again sometime. Oh yeah I also check my water perams just in case too, they are all spot on.
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Sorry for your loss, i didn't realize how small Snowball was... should be interesting to see if she did lay eggs at such a small size, D should have some things to say about that considering serendipity was probably a different species (filosus?)which is a dwarf unlike Hummelincki? not sure if I have my facts straight but... there is a good chance snowball was also that.
 
If her mantle is about the size of a quarter (behind the eyes to the end) then she was small but Serendipity was tiny when she started to brood. Maya is easily twice the size of Serendipity but her mantle grew extremely quickly while the eggs developed (about 2 weeks I would guess). Size in hummelincki is frustrating to pin down. None of the parts of studies I find really agree and the collections that are used vary considerably. The best I could find was a statement that said the hummelincki coming from Haiti tended to be larger but my two Keys males were well bigger than either female (however one study had its average size skewed by and exceptionally large female so there is a good chance sex is not a size differentiator). So, in a nut shell, we really don't seem to know what size could be considered average for hummelincki or even it there is a possibility of two related species.

Issues with raising the eggs are not so much if they are fertile or not (it would have been nice to know but your clean up crew will do their job very quickly with unprotected eggs) but that the hummelincki's eggs are tiny and pelagic for a period of time (amount unknown) after they are born. We know of no successful small egged octos raised in a home aquarium and less than a handful of extremely low number successes (and only vulgaris) in laboratory aquariums.
 
Yeah, thanks for the sympanthy. I've already found myself checking the den when I came home from school to see if it was out yet, but unfortunately it only came out once, to die. Snowball must of been a smaller species octo because all the pictures of the lincki I've seen on the site were much larger. After class this morning I checked the den and the rock she died under and found no eggs so I guess my inital presumptions about her sex were wrong the eggs were small white polyps.
 
So are hummelinckis the only species normally kept in aquaria that have the size lottery issue? It seems keeping hummelincki is a real gamble especially when you buy them from the LFS because you can't determine the age at all, unlike other species.
 
Dobrzemetal;145171 said:
So are hummelinckis the only species normally kept in aquaria that have the size lottery issue? It seems keeping hummelincki is a real gamble especially when you buy them from the LFS because you can't determine the age at all, unlike other species.

At this point almost every purchase we make toward an octopus or other cephalopod is a gamble. Most of the ones you are going to come across will be mature when they're collected, so what the suppliers have are mature ones. Some are younger, some are older. Size doesn't indicate much. A well fed 6-month old octopus is going to be considerably larger than an underfed 6-month old octopus.

All a part of the ceph-keeping hobby at this time I'm afraid.
 

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