[Octopus]: Taba - Jocco's 'Pus

[Jocco]

She ate Jerk Face.

I woke up, sat on the couch to inspect the tank, and saw her arm out. Excited, I called Rock over. We watched a little more of her push out of the rock... until I realized. It wasn't her, it was claws. White tipped.
It was Jerk Face.

We also can't find another hermit, Whiskers was mostly eaten, and we can't find one of the peppermints. She definitely got one of the teeny hermits too. I had upped her shrimp intake to 3 small pieces. She refused a fiddler last night.

 

[Jocco]

She forced our hand with naming her.

My first thought was Glenda. I thought the magical amazing name would be fun for an octopus. But it was vetoed.
My second thought was that we kept calling her 'girl', and saying 'that's my girl'... so I thought of the movie My Girl, and suggested Vada (pronounced Vayduh). Which was close enough to Lord Vader of Star Wars fame, which Roc thought was nice.

Then we were going to name her either Huginn or Muninn, for Roc's love of Oden and his ravens; leaning towards Muninn.

Then... she ate Jerk Face. The biggest hermit in the tank... and also our favorite.

After informing our friends and while telling family, my mother suggested Gavone. Derived from Cafone, but when said with a southern Italian accent sounds like Gaw-vone. An Italian American word that has come to mean (in these parts anyway), someone who gorges on food, stuffs face, etc. Originally it meant a hot mess, drunk, cigs hanging out of mouth, sloppy, rude etc. This didn't quite fit either.

Roc started looking up Filipino female names, and they were cute, but we aren't Angelina Jolie. I started doing dishes, and put 2+2 together... and asked him to look up the word for "Fat" in Filipino. He also starting looking up other words: Eight, Legs, Fierce, and Love. We found many of these words sounded a little masculine (we admit knowing nothing of the language).

Long story short, we have settled on calling her - drumroll please...



Taba

She is on the smaller side right now, eating big meals, and will live a short-ish life in the tank, we thought this little word fits her well.

We cannot wait to see her out and about, but she is keeping to a 10pm sneak feeding through the hole in the den she has picked, and is hunting after we go to bed.

 

[Jocco]

We have decided to nap today and try to see Taba out and hunting tonight. Fingers crossed!

 

[DWhatley]

Good name! We had one that we just wouldn't fit a name and eventually called it Onn (pronounced own) for Octopus with No Name

 

[Jocco]

Thank you D!

We did not see her come out yet. She is more often sticking an eye out of the hole though.

She readily takes frozen shrimp from a feeder stick, we did find the 2nd peppermint alive, no more hermit deaths (but I did order more). We froze, then cut a fiddler in half last night and she put more than 2 arms out for it! She seems to refuse anything that will not fit through her peering/eating hole of the den rock.

I wonder how big she will get before she comes out... if she comes out. I'm glad she is still eating... I've read here, not eating, is a sign of goodbye.

I hope with more hermits in the tank we can catch her out and out one night. The hermits have taken up conclave in the far corner of the tank in the front. Usually not venturing more than half way across the tank.

 

[DWhatley]

OK, it may be that Taba is not a dwarf. The more you post, the more she reminds me of LittleBit and I have read (but again have never seen a confirmed joubini) that O. joubini and a juvenile O. vulgaris are very hard to tell apart (note the assumption of joubini in LittleBit's thread). I may be becoming jealous as she was one of my all time favorites (you also may need to worry about tank size).

If this is the case, Taba may not be mature enough to ID sex.

 

[Jocco]

WHAT?! TANK SIZE?! INSTANT PANIC!

omg omg omg...

 

[DWhatley]

LOL, yea, that was the reason I did not bring up the possibility earlier but the actions are so similar to LittleBit's that I decided I should mention it. I can't remember what size tank you ended up with, please remind me.

LittleBit was ultimately quite small for O. vulgaris and lived comfortably in our 60+ tank but stayed in the 40 for half her life (I recommend reading/viewing her thread, linked in the above post). she was unusually small for even a Caribbean O. vulgaris but died a natural death after laying infertile eggs (possibly earlier than would be expected). There does not seem to be any evidence that octopuses will dwarf to their tank size so there are some that don't get larger than O. briareus but a 55 is pushing it. Anything smaller is way too small for an adult.

 

[Jocco]

We have a 55 gallon tank.

Her actions?

She has a healthy appetite, and holds onto the food stick every other time we feed her. It really depends on how stuck the food is to the stick. We have yet to see her out. She LOVES her den.

I'm reading over the journal thread now... seems a world of a different creature. Should we remove the red light? Should we gently wiggle our fingers like you do to see if she will ... it will... come out?
Should we try to screen the shrimp to the other side of the tank?

 

[Jocco]

And we have tried to feed her at 8pm, no luck. 9pm, no luck. 10pm Taba will grab anything. Maybe we will try 8pm again tonight. But I think Taba is strictly a 10pm or later 'pus. We know she got a couple of hermits, and since adding her to the tank, they have stayed on the opposite side. As far as we know, she has come out to hunt or explore twice since we put her in the tank 13 nights ago.
Roc hasn't been feeling well and has been out on the couch at all hours of the night, TV on or off... still have not seen her out.
Last night we saw her eye extended out of the hole watching... something... TV maybe... likely a shrimp go to town on a dead snail.

Wait, there has been 1 tiny hermit that changed shells living in front of the den... it changed about a day or two after we put the pea sized hermits into the tank. I don't think it has moved much, and it is still alive. I would think Taba would have eaten a meal close to home, if hunting again.
But she ate Jerk Face, the biggest hermit. Maybe the little ones aren't on the menu?

We only once got the size of the frozen shrimp wrong. She pushed the too big piece out of her den in the morning. I have been making the pieces half that size and offering both halves, Taba takes them both. No remnants that I have seen since.

The cleaner shrimp try to swoop in and pester the feeding stick and clean around her den hole - we rarely see Taba's arms swat them away now.

 

[DWhatley]

All seems to be going very well. LittleBit was extremely reclusive until she was at least twice (maybe 3 x) her initial size. She was also very nocturnal until she has some size to her. We only saw her at feeding time for what seemed like forever (journals tend to condense the time frame ). She was extremely feisty and very strong, so much so that I never tried to teach her to come to be petted (I always regretted that part but I was never sure if she would bite - something I prefer to avoid). She DID seem to want human attention and I think her feistiness was her way of interacting more than any kind of aggression.

She won't likely start to interact until sometime around 5 months of age (how can you tell she is this old? She will start to come out more and ... interact . I know that doesn't help for now but it will give you a clue to how old she is when she does.)

There is no reason change the red light as long as there is no white illumination at night. The movement of lights on TV's and computer screens seems to be a common attraction. Fairly recently (2010 one of the articles here), it has been discovered that they cannot actually focus on either unless they are HD but we have noted that they will often watch lower resolution screens.

 

[Jocco]

Tried a feeding at 8:15pm, had eyes and front 3 arms out for a piece of shrimp.
Going to try a piece of fiddler in a little while.
I read here that Joubini will get several kills and drag them to the den to feed at their leisure.
Let's see if Taba does this...

She took her meal out of a new hole, not the usual eye/food hole. It is a bigger hole! AND she had an arm coming out of the bottom cave area of the rock she made a den in higher up.

Should we be pulling against her a little when using a feeding stick? Or let her take it with little effort?

 

[Jocco]

We have a 53" HD on the wall, she was enjoying some Netflix marathoning (unless she was watching the shrimp eat the snail... actually.. the snail shell is in the cave under the den. Hm.
I also read here that if they get too many shells, they will move dens, I think I am going to start moving some shells.

My shrimp are going to get darwin awards, or eaten. There is a peppermint at the (new) hole she accepted her meal, cleaning up scraps. The shrimp REALLY love shrimp... ughhhh... I hope she is eating it... and not pushing it out early in the am and they snatch it.

She doesn't come out of the rock ... just a few arms, the last couple of times her eye too. "See her at meal time" lol... we more so see a leg out of the curtain on the stage lol.

It has been super cool reading threads and seeing other octopus out and about in the tank - I think I have some re-reading and time stamp checking to do. The tip about just how long it takes them to come out, is very helpful. Thank you

 

[DWhatley]

I'm not sure where you saw that too large of a midden would prompt a move. One of the ways divers locate octopuses is by spotting their middens. I don't know of a "need" to move the shells but I don't see a reason not to if it makes you more comfortable.

I was going to mention looking at the time on LittleBit's posts, what you are seeing is very similar so there are few/no pictures or posts of this time. The only problem I foresee (other than possibly space) is that starting with this species may spoil you and you will be forever looking for another.

 

[Jocco]

Haha, I hope Taba spoils us. That would be fantastic, especially because their lifespans are so short.

9:30pm half a fiddler, went for it, grabbed, fondled excitedly. Dropped it minutes later.