[Octopus]: Varys, our brooding O. mercatoris

Mine, at least, all went to the wall at night. I would wait until they come out to the tank wall and not attempt to get them out of the LR.

Pictures?
 
No pics yet... I had gently herded one baby out of the rocks and onto the wall using a chop-stick and as soon as I grabbed the camera... SWOOSH! Off it went under the opposite end of the large rock that Varys is under. No sign of the second baby. They are larger than I expected... and totally brown except for a brief moment when the one went white as I was prodding it.

This makes 36 days since we first spotted the eggs... maybe 39 or 40 days since Varys first disappeared and went into "broody mode". Water temperature remained between 74 and 76 F.

I guess I'll leave them alone for now and get some sleep since I need to get up early... I'll try again tomorrow. Good thing I manged to finish the Mercaplex Octominiums! So very exciting! I really need an octopus wrangler emoticon! HAHA
 
Got back out of bed about half an hour later and took several shots including this little poser...

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It's about 5 mm wide and this is just minutes after it got spit out of the den. I counted 5 last night and could still 4 when I woke up this morning. Gotta run now... :biggrin2:
 
We were so wiped out after the late night and early morning that we didn't stay up late enough to see most of the babies last night, but we did find two. The plan was to capture them and begin isolating them in the Mercaplex Octominiums and we did manage to catch one using a 2 oz measuring cup instead of a baster. (We had spotted it buried under the coral right next to the glass front, so we were able to scoop it and the rubble out together. Even then, it shot out of the rubble and nearly escaped over the side of the cup before we could tip it into the octominium!!) The other baby we almost caught must have known how to teleport because one minute it was in the cup, the next it was gone... nowhere to be seen. :new_beammeup:

The one we did manage to wrangle is now the first occupant of the Octominiums. It seemed to respond to bits of cyclopeez gently targeted at it and we added a few amphipods for it to hunt. By this morning it had taken up residence in one of the shells:

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Here's a view of the containers in Varys' tank.

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We have several more units ready to go into other tanks as well. Of course, we'll have to catch the little squirts before all our hard work can be of any use. More pics and details on the containers are listed in our "Mercaplex Octominiums" gallery. Circulation seems to be very gentle but distinct with the water return nozzle directed at the netting covering the backs of the containers.
 
I bought a turkey baster today so I could try Jean's method... It can take a little effort to coax some of them out of the tube, but it works really well! The only thing I had to figure out was that after I sucked them up and lifted the baster out of the water, I had to immediately put the tip of the baster over the container I wanted to deposit them in or some of them would swim right back down the tube and PLOP themselves back into the tank. I don't know how many I thought I had caught only to wonder why the container and baster were both empty!

As of this moment, I'm happy to report that we have 6 babies in the three units that are in Varys' tank. Not sure whether to try moving 3 of them out and into the 3 containers in another tank or not. D... you didn't seem to have any problems as long as they were well fed right? (And no adult males in the tank!) They all seem to be accepting the cyclopeez which is good since my order from Sachs is still some time away (long story). One actually inked a couple of times, but I removed those and all seems well.

I know there was at least one more egg in the den last night so there could still be more hiding out. Here's a few pics of the current "oc"cupants...

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Greg,
With the first batch, I only had 6 and kept them all in a large breeder net. I had them in the standard type net for a short time and lost the one when it climbed up the net and couldn't find the water but the other five lived together for several months before I split them into groups of two and three and after 11+ months the males are all still alive but showing signs of old age (Miss Broody was never seen again after the second mating). My second brood has not faired well but I don't think it is from babies eating babies. The young started to come out for feeding early but then started disappearing and not coming out when I would feed. Now I think it may have been the adult males entering the nets causing the extreme shyness and loss of young but this is only conjecture.

WATCH OUT! If you THINK you have a baby in the baster and then it does not come out, do not assume it slipped out the bottom. They are very hard to see in the baster. Be sure you completely refill the baster if you think one escaped and check again with it full of water. Mine would stick to the inside of the baster and were all but invisible with no water.

Love the Mercaplex Octominiums!
 
Long overdue update on Varys' hatchlings....

Ah... where to begin? (Get some popcorn, this could take a while :popcorn:)

So the eggs started hatching on Friday (2/22) and continued through about Tuesday (2/26). Varys had pretty much stopped accepting food by this point. At that time, at total of 15 babies had shown up and we removed each into the octominiums as we found them (we had six units set up). By 2/25, we had already lost 5 babies. Nitrate was high (20-30 ppm) so we did water changes and moved the remaining babies in their octominiums to another tank just to be safe. We never did actually see one of the babies eat any of the amphipods we had put into the octominiums or any of the cyclopeeze we targeted at them. At this point, we began to suspect that food was an issue as well. The babies seemed to lose function and coordination of their arms and curled up into sad little balls that eventually couldn't hold on to anything and wafted around in the current. It was tragic! :cry: Needless to say, we were horrified and ashamed. By Thursday (2/28), all of the remaining babies were dead and no new ones had hatched in 2 or 3 days. We were so depressed at this point that we didn't want to get online and have to write about it.
:goodbye:

On Friday (2/29), the live mysids and gamma pods showed up (the timing was our fault, not the supplier's fault). We were about to leave town, so we dumped them into the other reef tanks to feed our other critters while we were out of town for the weekend. We spent the weekend consoling ourselves, trying to figure how we would do things differently next time... although we both agreed that "next time" wouldn't be anytime soon.

We were wrong.

When we got home on Sunday evening (3/2), we were stunned to find 3 new babies in Varys' tank! :bugout: By the next morning, we had spotted 6. The morning after that, we spotted 10. This put the total up around 25 babies? We can only guess that when we first saw the eggs, Varys was only halfway done, and continued to lay a bunch more afterward.

So. Time to implement all those things we had discussed!

#1 Quit using the octominiums. 100% mortality rate = bad. Babies were left in Varys' tank.
#2 Get live foods ASAP. By this point, our LFS had managed to get in a shipment of "Tigger Pods" (Tigriopus californicus -- basically live cyclopeeze).
#3 Order more live food from Sachs.
#4 Stuff Varys' tank with a ridiculous amount of macro algae (with many gamma and amphipods living in it) and start turning on the whites and actinics during the day to help reduce nitrates.
#5 Get gamma pods from the filter media in the saltwater tanks at the college.
#6 Pray.

The results?

On Monday night (3/3), the babies immediately began feeding on the tigger pods. We turned out the light in the octo tank, but left the actinics on in the mantis tank next to it. This attracted all of the little red pods to that wall where they concentrate like moths under a porch light. The babies lined the wall with their little arms shooting this way and that, snagging pods and stuffing their little mouths.
(Video of 3 babies chasing tigger pods on the glass)

They are usually very good about giving each other space, but occassional non-violent encounters and startled inkings occured. On Wednesday evening (3/5), four of the babies accepted frozen mysid heads from the end of a pipette! :biggrin2: But that is tiring work and requires the patience of Job! They fed from the pipette again the next morning. On Thursday night, we added about 30 gamma pods collected from the tanks at work and several of the babies continued to eat the tigger pods, but they had no luck catching the larger gamma pods.

We weren't out of the woods yet though (and may not be even now). By Friday (3/7) afternoon, 3 babies had died, so we did more water changes. Fortunately, the live mysids showed up later that day. All 200 mysids went right into the tank with the babies. It was a madhouse! At least five of the babies showed up to catch live mysids.

And then, a moment of panic! It looked as though one of the babies had actually caught one of the other babies and was trying to eat it! A few gentle proddings with a bamboo skewer weren't enough to make it let go. It kept stumbling along the the glass and then trying to swim away while tenaciously clutching its great big dinner.

:octorun: "This is mine and you can't have it!" :octorun:

Fortunately, when the baby swam away, it was easier to see its catch and we realized that it had actually nabbed an enormous gamma pod that was at least as big as the little octo itself!
:cheers:

One of the babies was out during "lights on" today, and we aren't sure what to make of that, but it did go back into hiding a short while later. We hope this is not a sign of impending doom. (Baby daywalker video)

So... it's been quite a roller-coaster ride. We are definitely doing better with the second half of this batch, but overall, we've had a 75% mortality rate and obviously aren't very good at this. Poor Varys. All that self-sacrifice and effort. We've never had this much difficulty with any of our other saltwater inverts (even some of the more delicate ones) and felt like helpless, hapless idiots. We really want to keep these last few kiddos alive and would welcome any additional advice.
 

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