[Octopus]: Asian Food Market Octos - Take 2

The one male continues to deteriorate but the other male and female seem to be improving. Found a crayfish that was dead this morning with an empty tail... No sign of any flesh in there at all, although I am uncertain as to whether this is an affect of the saltwater on it. The head and thorax still contained internal organs so unclear on what happened. I removed one that died from the saltwater last night and removed another dead one today. I need to get some fresh shrimp for them as the frozen doesn't seem to cut it. Perhaps also some mollies so I can acclimate them to the saltwater as a potential fod to induce eating. Raised the temperature another degree to 59 - have done so quicker than I wanted to but figure three degrees is not that much over three days. I am shooting for a temperature of about 65 degrees.
 
Lost the male that looked like it wasn't doing very well. The other male appears to be doing well, but will not take any offered food as of yet (I offered some silversides to no avail and also put in some more crayfish). It came out for a spine when I was down there and I turned on the room lights and took some video. The female was in hiding in the back where I couldn't get to, but last I saw of her she seemed to be OK. Coloration seems pretty good as well. The male that ventured out was a reddish brown color and didn't shift much from that. I took a video as well, not the best clarity as it lost focus in the low light conditions of the tank often.


Please ignore the screaming children battling on Kinect Sports in the background...
 
:thumbsup: That color looks amazing compared to any of the first attempt! You might try to watch (difficult, I know) the length of that regenerating arm. If you see growth, that is a good sign for both age and health as the regeneration slows as they age or are in poor health. The white spot on the front of the webbing looks like permanent chromatophore damage though and more often seen in older animals. I suspect (conjecture from one incident only and the animal died) that the extreme cold could have caused it.

The male is moving around nicely so I think your caution on how warm to keep the tank is warranted. His stroll does not look like what I have seen of senescence but it is a concern that he is not eating. It will be interesting to see if continuing to warm the tank will induce an appetite.

Cool that the kids are enjoying the octopus!
 
Wow those eggs are ENORMOUS! I'll give this a thorough read tonight and see if I can provide any info that hasn;t been mentioned yet. Thanks for posting pics!
Excited to read your feedback! I think I put this in the previous thread, but the octopuses have squared arms as well. I believe it is fairly apparent in the videos as well but then again the video is not great in terms of focus quality - will have to use the video camera or do some underwater filming...
 
I bought a used camera to try "underwater" filming but have not proceeded with the experiment :roll:.

@mucktopus, I thought they looked really large too but have never seen eggs before they were laid. They look about the same as O. briareus I think (with no size or reference it is hard to tell). Also look at the hectocotylus, it is distinctive. I am sure I have see pictures of one looking like this but have no clue as to where. Any suggestions on finding ID info with the clues presented?
 
I left the temperature alone today and am basically twiddling my thumbs at this point... I know that the remaining male and female are both alive but I am unclear on whether they are doing any eating at all. One of the crayfish was missing two legs, but other than that appeared to be whole (although it could not handle the salt water so I pulled both of them and fed them to my eels). There are now two burrows in the tank where they have gone under the rock and I can see evidence of their digging by the holes that surround the rock itself. I know that they are in there because I can see the random arm and when I turned on the light I could see one of them huffing and puffing and blowing out little clouds of silt/sand from its burrow as it moved deeper into it, but other than that, no sightings...

I will go down later tonight when it's dark to see whether they have touched the piece of shrimp that I offered on a skewer, not sure of what other types of food to offer at this point in time. I have to date offered silversides, clams and snails, red claw crabs, crayfish, and frozen and "fresh" shrimp. Any other suggestions on what foods to potentially try would be great. I am thinking something smelly and stinky might entice them to eat, but am unclear on whether that will work or not. I was thinking of trying scallop as I fed a flame scallop to a wild octopus years back on my honeymoon in Tahiti, but the scallop at the store doesn't look all that great.
 
Have you tried plain old live fiddler crabs? They are a typical fall back but I don't know how well they will do in the cold.

I tried looking up Inverts of South Korea and got this :roll:
Off Grid Inverts South Korea Trade,Buy South Korea Direct From Off Grid Inverts Factories at Alibaba.com


Changing my scan to Marine Invertegrates South Korea, I did find this pdf entitled Marine Invertebrates of the South Pacific. It was not much help (under grad paper I think) but it does show a chart on pg 26 that suggests that crabs and shrimp would be the expected primary prey.

I also found this pdf, Coastal Mollusks of the Yellow Sea Ecoregion and their habitats. Again not a lot of help but does confirm clams should be on the menu.

When you offered clams, did you open them and leave them out overnight? If not, you might try it as the clams don't deteriorate quickly and Shiitake at one like this the other night when I placed it by her den.
 
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I have live clams in there and some of them open up slightly as they die off but are not eaten. Haven't seen fiddler crabs anywhere here for a long time - also have yet to order them from an online seller as I don't want to end up with a bunch of fiddler crabs but not have need of them if these don't make it...
 
Will the eels eat live crabs? :sagrin: You might find another bait crab (sometimes called mud crabs but there are several species used) that would be equivalent.
 
Am headed down in a few minutes to check - doing a conference call right now but will open a clam up and leave it between the two dens to see if there is any desire to eat a freshly killed versus a clam that died.
 
Will the eels eat live crabs? :sagrin: You might find another bait crab (sometimes called mud crabs but there are several species used) that would be equivalent.
The eels will definitely eat them as will the lionfish that are in with them... good point and since I've been feeding the crayfish to the eels you'd think I would have thought of that!

Will have to check sources for the fiddlers and mud crabs. I would like to find a place that sells mole crabs - if these guys burrow then these are probably a likely prey item in nature.
 
Sometimes you will see mole crabs listed as sand crabs on eBay but there are no listings today. I have seen them listed as bait so finding a near by bait shop that keeps a variety might be a major win.
 
Unfortunately I'm pretty landlocked or I'd collect them myself (the kids and I always have fun catching them at the beach)...

Last night I left a chunk of "fresh" shrimp in the tank in addition to splitting open two clams and putting in another crayfish minus 1/2 of each pincer. All of the offerings remain intact so I decided to bump the temperature up again. I did this late last night and then again this morning, a degree each time. The current setting is 60 degrees so at warmest the tank will get to 61 before the chiller kicks on.

I did see both of them out and wandering this morning and am questioning whether I have a male and female or two males with a missing hectocotylous. What I initially interpreted as new growth on the arm may have simply been me seeing the wrong arm.

Both look "good" from what I expect of a healthy specimen with good coloration, appropriate pupil dilation, and normal movement. I do wonder, though, if there's potentially an issue with having two octopuses in the same tank now. I have not been able to determine what aggression and territoriality these have in the wild since I can't even figure out what kind they are and to date I have not found two potentially healthy specimens (I buy multiples to give myself a better chance of success) but at the same time, I have not seen any sort of aggression between them. They have crawled across each other many times and I have yet to see any displays that would suggest unhappiness with having another octopus in close proximity out of them. I doubt that they are colonial like the Greater and Lesser Pacific Striped Octopuses as I am assuming that with them being a common food product that is harvested in such large numbers that this would not have escaped people's notice, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they are aggressive towards each other.

One way to determine if this is a causal factor in their not eating would be to remove one of them, but without a suitable place to put another one, I don't feel this is a good idea as getting them over the health hump is difficult to begin with. Has anyone experienced octopuses being stressed out to the point of not eating because they are close to another octopus? As I said, I would expect that if this was the case there would be at the minimum some posturing between the two, but there have been no displays that would lead me to suspect problems of this nature at this point in time.
 

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