[Octopus]: Taba - Jocco's 'Pus

[Jocco]

Checked the water when we got home from work, all is good.

I waited until midnight to try to feed her a small piece of shrimp, and she took it, arms out and everything. She wasn't coy or absent like she has been the last few days.

I am Italian/Irish American, Rocco is Italian/Irish/Blackfoot... together we are wonderful in the kitchen and we have never owned a pet that didn't take every opportunity to eat.
We do not have children.

The last few days, wow, I'm sure I don't need to tell most of you... but that was scary.

And this is just the beginning... woosa...

 

[DWhatley]

@tonmo I am not sure what a concerned octopus smilie looks like but I'll think on it

@Jocco, welcome to the club

 

[Jocco]

@tonmo
Concerned= :/ (but with 8 arms)
Also, make a shrug lol

Seriously people... We were so worried, it clouded our work days.

I cannot imagine not knowing where our ceph is in the tank, or longer boughts without eating, or anything else I read about so far.
Wish us luck.

If owning a ceph had a bingo card, this was certainly an ink dot moment.

 

[DWhatley]

?

 

[Jocco]

Aw face, yes, that is concern

 

[DWhatley]

Actually, the arm in the mouth (intended to look something like sucking a thumb) is an actual stress concern with octopuses. We don't know a lot about it and, from what I can tell, it likely involves skin deterioration (bacterial or otherwise) but we have also seen suggestions arm loss (not necessarily through autophagy) with stress. Here is an I09 article on some of the thoughts.

 

[Jocco]

Ohh. Good read!

All is well here.
We went to VT for a week and had a friend take care of Taba. I've never written such detailed instructions on how to feed a pet before! By the end, all it was missing was emergency contact numbers and the signature of a first parent worried about leaving their child with a stranger... lol.

She continues to eat well and be illusive. No new shell or rock door, or discarded shells from hunts.

 

[tonmo]

?

I had missed this. Adding now!

 

[tonmo]

done

 

[Jocco]

Roc started hand feeding Taba the week before last, even with a week away, she still has not hesitated to take food from his fingers.
She reaches out with an arm to touch his fingers and take the food, much like someone reaching out half asleep for their phone or glasses on the nightstand.

Trying to take a photo in the red light is terrible

By the time she decides to come out and let us see her (him), she is going to be sooo big. I regret not keeping her in a smaller critter keeper like I have read some of the newbie ceph keepers have done.

Taba has been in our tank for 7 weeks.

5 cleaner shrimp are alive, the fiddler (we tried to lure her out with) is still alive, so are the 3 fish, the pencil urchin, and as far as I can tell, so are the lil hermits we put in a couple weeks ago.

 

[DWhatley]

The fish may be at least partially responsible for Taba not venturing out more.

 

[Jocco]

Pics of the finger, food, arm action.

Taba likes to startle Roc first by flicking an arm out at him, but then slinks out a couple of arms to hold his fingers, gently tapping around.
Then she starts yanking lol, they have a lil tug of war with 2 arms, and then a 3rd arm steals the food.

 

[Jocco]

Coraline algae and algae in general is being eaten by my clean crew, mainly the pencil urchin. Since we put in the red light, the algae stopped growing.
We spent months cultivating it for the tank environment.
Is the tank ok?
Can we do anything to better the tank environment?

 

[DWhatley]

Pencils love coraline and I have moved them into tanks just to be able to see the rocks again when the purple gets out of hand. I am not a big fan of coraline algae, particularly when it wants to use my acrylic as a substrate (urchins don't seem to want to attack it there but that is likely a good thing as they would scratch the tank worse than my scraper). With the exception of the coraline, I am not sure why you WANT algae to grow in your tank. It is typically a sign of overfeeding (guilty) and can become quite a nuisance. Most mature tanks that are not overfed will have very little.

 

[Jocco]

Ohh... so coraline is just part of the tank maturing system, but not necessary in a matured tank system. Didn't know that. Good to know. I was starting to worry.

I've read that the pencil urchin will move rocks etc - we've had bigger tank reconstruction/rock movement with the pistol shrimp.

Does a new tank need to run for 3 months to put cleaner shrimp into it? Cycle new live rock and all that? We want to move our shrimp, but we don't want to give them back to the LFS.