Aculeatus Hatchlings

[~Flighty~]

We have found three of them so far. I had not made plans to try raising them, but we have caught three so far. I wish a breeder was close enough to come get some and give them a shot.
http://www.tonmo.com/forums/showthread.php?20363-Heidi-A.-aculeatus

 

[Neogonodactylus]

With small, planktonic paralarvae, rearing them has never been accomplished. They will all be dead in a couple of days.

Roy

 

[~Flighty~]

Oh, I know that, but it never hurts to give it a shot especially if you have had success with other tough babies. We can always learn something about what foods they do go after and what is killing them.

 

[snowmaker]

With small, planktonic paralarvae, rearing them has never been accomplished. They will all be dead in a couple of days.

Roy

Flighty is only about 1.5 hr. drive for me.
I realize unsuccessful to date, but does anyone know what has been tried?
I can easily provide rotifers and tigger pods, but fear nutritional value not enough. I am maybe a month or 2 away from having a native copepod culture and T. isochrysis to feed them and thinking this would be best chance I can give them. Timing just not quite right unfortunately...

Any tips? ... Anyone? I can possibly pick some of these up today. I am not easily discouraged, but do not want to attempt if it's going to be totally futile.

Thanks for any quick responses.

 

[snowmaker]

You might also want to try NEAq - their fish curator - Steve Bailey - slbailey at neaq.org, or another guy - Brian Nelson - bnelson at neaq.org may be able to send an aquarist over to pick some up. Another avenue is Roger Williams University - Marine Bio lab in CT. I think would have a good chance at raising these as they have the copepod and micro algae cultures running I believe. - They have been successful in raising baby queen triggerfish, and may welcome this opportunity. I do not have any contact info for RWU, but LMK if you are interested and I can find someone. - Actually, can try here:
http://www.marinebreeder.org/
... and try to contact member "spawner" - Dr. Andrew Rhyne who is Asst. Professor; Marine Biology Research Scientist at RWU and also collaborates with NEAq. I think that Dr. Rhyne has an overwhelming enthusiasm for these types of projects.
If anyone says, "It can't be done" or, "Nobody has done that yet", then all the more reason to attempt it.

 

[~Flighty~]

Thanks so much! I will try contacting people this morning. Please shoot me a PM if you are at all interested in trying and I will send you my #. Maybe we can meet halfway.

If you are interested there are still many of them (I just counted twenty without looking hard) this morning. I have observed them striking at things in the tank so I have been running water through my macro algae and giving the live critters that come out to them. Anyone know how to tell if the gut is empty or full from one of my craptacular photos?

 

[Lmecher]

Congratulations, how is Heidi doing? Good luck in your venture. Great positive attitude to have. The same thing was said about all the species that are now captivly raised.

 

[~Flighty~]

Holy cow that was amazing!!!

So we have not seen Heidi for four weeks and assumed she had laid her eggs and died. She lived in a large piece of very large porous live rock, so there was no way short of a sledge hammer of checking for eggs or a body. yesterday I saw a few babies in the tank and then at night there were hundreds of them. I collected as many as I could throughout the day today and had maybe 25-35 of them in a krissel (sp?). Tomorrow someone is coming to get half of them and I was going to bring the rest to an aquarium for one of their biologists to work with.

So I've been collecting them all day one or two at a time as they came near the surface. Tonight I was trying to get some pods off of the glass to stick in with the babies and I noticed that there were a few more babies hanging around. I started scooping them up and suddenly out of Heidi's rock pops a long tentacle, then another, then another. They flail around a bit and suddenly hundreds of babies stream out of the rock. It was incredible to see!!! They looked like someone had turned on an airstone in the rock. Heidi was coaxing them all out to hatch at once. When it slowed down a little I touched a tentacle with my finger and she held on to it for a little bit. Her suckers didn't stick like they did a month ago and her tentacles were white and old looking, but she held on and felt around on my finger. I offered her a shrimp and she just felt it a little and eventually pulled her arms into her rock again.

I have collected as many babies as I can, probably several hundred but it gets so hard to count at this point. They will be off to two different experienced aquarists in the morning and have the best chance I can give them.

wow.

 

[DWhatley]

She will likely exit her den the last day or two. I have had some of my females return to their dens after exiting but usually they will remain in the open.

One of my girls who never would quite touch my hand (she would make attempts but then back off) showed an odd behavior after coming out of brooding (no viable eggs) that made me think she had always wanted to complete the touch (I don't think it really hurts to Anthropomorphize a little) I opened the top and put my hand in. She touched it and let me gently pet one arm with two finders (one on top, one sucker side) for a prolonged time. I tried touching other arms and her mantle and she declined but would continually let me pet the one arm. A few hours later she went to the back and passed on. Sad but sweet ending.

 

[DWhatley]

I have a thought of something you might try. The idea is less likely to work with palegic hatchlings but I will throw it out anyway. Do you have a sump with a filter sock? If you do put a couple in there and leave it alone for three weeks (adding a little cyclop-eeze might be a good idea and a mesh bag of charcoal). I am definitely going to experiment with this next time around and it is unlikely the small eggs will respond like Cassy (Momma Cass, my filter sock hatchling) but if you have the set up you might give it a shot.

 

[~Flighty~]

Well several hundred little babies are off to a few new homes. We split them up and spread them around so we can learn as much as we can. I am optimistic that there might be a chance with the different foods that will be tried.

 

[me2003]

Thanks for octopus paralarvae. I am trying collecting plankton with a plankton net. It looks like some researchers may have had some success
raising octopus paralarvae. Below are a couple of references. Copepods
may be a possible food source. They used live king crab (Lithodes santolla) zoeae. Juvenile (1-5 day) Mysid shrimp might be a good food source but they are 50 cents each.

Mike

Biology of the Planktonic Stages of Benthic Octopuses,R. Villanueva and M.D. Norman
Oceanography and Marine Biology: An Annual Review, Volume 46

Rearing and Growth of the Octopus Robsonella fontaniana (Cephalopoda: Octopodidae) From Planktonic Hatchlings to Benthic Juveniles
Iker Uriarte1,2,*, Jorge Hernández1,2,**, Jessica Dörner1, Kurt Paschke1,2, Ana Farías1,2, Enzo Crovetto3,{dagger} and Carlos Rosas4

"R. fontaniana could serve as a reference model for rearing other cephalopod species with planktonic phases (González et al., 2008; Uriarte et al., 2008a, b; Pereda et al., 2009)."

 

[snowmaker]

Thanks for the opportunity with these. Some results here:

Day 4 - Down to 1 this morning.
I cannot get a picture showing it, but there is a light red / pink spot inside of mantle, just aft of center. I'm unsure of where gut might be located.

What I fed:
New hatch artemia
Rotifers
Tigriopus califoricus
Copepods and tiny isopods vacuumed off glass of cuttlefish display
Mortor / pestle ground flake and shrimp pellet (one of my mysid foods)
Frozen cyclops

The set up for the 100+ hatchlings:
5g aga w/ screened bulkhead drain, plumbed into a 165g volume reef set up.
"very low" flow
I neglected to light block tank the first day, but did there after.
End of day 2, I transferred 8 surviving to a small Dip-n-Pour inside the 5g and reduced flow (in it) to a trickle
End of day 3 had 2 surviving

Excellent photos here:
marinebreeder.org

We tried to take pictures of a 32" display hooked up to microscope, but mine didn't come out well.

 

[DWhatley]

Have you tried frozen Cyclop-eeze? Amongst other things, it will show in the gut.

 

[snowmaker]

Ha,
Yes, forgot that one. I did thaw a cube of SFB frozen cyclops and drew out just a little for the octopus. I remember seeing that bright orange in mysid guts.