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Barrels-o-fun at the NRCC

Joined
Jul 3, 2003
Messages
295
Surprise! It's a barrel o' GPO arriving earlier today at the NRCC.

She was packed in several bags, encased in cold paks, surrounded in fiberglass insulation, and in a big blue barrel.

It took hours to raise her temp from 7 deg C (eek!) to the 15 deg of the tank. In the meantime, she was a feisty one! When she finally did wake up, she just about crawled out of two of the bags. The remainder of the waiting time, I had to constantly pull the arms off the sides... with both hands.

Not shy at all. There was a crab hanging out in the tank when she was finally introduced and she pounced on it immediately. You think she was glad to get out of the bag?
 

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Where is this octo from - wildcaught or from one of the West Coast aquariums? She looks fairly large - should be a lot of fun to play with. :smile:

Nancy
 
i'm pretty sure it's wild. i hear they usually come to us from oregon or a supplier in canada (and I neglected to peek at the shipping label).

oooh, i dont think we've thought about what to call her... but she is a mischevious one.
 
So do you know what's the reason of having her at the NRCC? Any involvement in biomedical res.?
I remember that just before I left the NRCC last year, some GPO embryos arrived and Leigh wanted to try rearing the hatchlings. Any success?
By the way, who are the lab managers now that leigh and jonathan are gone?

cheers,

eups
 
You could conduct a TONMO poll to decide a name for her! That would be cool. Maybe 8 name suggestions, and pick the winner.

At one of the zoos here they ran a nationwide competition for the best names for 2 new lion cubs, to drum up interest, and they got huge responses. Thousands of them.
 
Oh, it's the National Resource Center for Cephalopods. they're pretty well-known for breeding multiple generations of two species of cuttlefish in captivity. Also we have bimacs, GPO, and nautilus.

They supply them to researchers far and wide. Often there will be visiting scientists come to conduct their research on site.

so, as you can imagine, for any ceph-fan, it's a pretty neat place to work. They hire lots of college interns to help take care of the day to day activities (collecting live food, feeding, cleaning, etc) and that's what I do.

I finally dragged my boyfriend there a few weeks ago and he was surprised how interesting it really was to watch the critters doing what they do.... eating mostly.
 
Wow! That sounds great, if only it wasn't so far away (DalHousie, Halifax, Canada!). Couldn't find a website for it though. Actually, not one ON it, though I did find one for the texas institute that its related to.

Cheers!
 
ohh, so the nrcc isnt a public aquarium. Any idea what experiments the gpo is for? are you allowed to talk about it?

Does the nrcc release its cuttlefish rearing process info? It would be great to see how they get such a good reliable system for growing cuttles.
 
I dont think the gpo is destined for any research. it may be backup for an aquarium.

As for the cuttles, it's not nearly as high-tech as you may expect. Mostly centered on the ridiculously large filter bed full of crushed oyster shell (lets say... the same volume as the tank itself). and 3 meals a day of live food (keeps 'em from eating eachother). when they grow up, they're weaned onto chopped frozen shrimp, but it's not easy to get them to accept it.
 

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