Conanny - O.briareus Formerly Conan The Destroyer

[Animal Mother]

Well, if it is a female with eggs, at least they'd be large enough to raise!

 

[joefish84]

thats true

 

[joefish84]

well here are the pics. these were from tonight during den construction time. managed to get a few shots off right before the entrance was closed up.

 

[corw314]

He's very cute! I hope to have my 75 up and running this weekend. I'm going into tremors from lack of an octopus in the household!!!!

 

[dreadhead]

Nice,look's small how big is s/he?

 

[joefish84]

mantle is about 2 inches now legs are really really long

 

[simple]

yea mine has done the same thing, he/she has spent the past 3 or 4 days building a den. I can see its eyes but it hasn't come out for a couple of days..

 

[aspinn]

wow great colors =) what breed is he? and how big is your tank?

 

[Animal Mother]

Haha, breed.

It's a briareus.

 

[joefish84]

conan the destroyer... has eggs

well it seems that what i thought was true. conan has laid a massive clump of eggs in the new den. from what i can tell shes laid about 10-15 strands of 20-30 eggs each and shes still in the process of laying as i type(she must of been eating a whole lot to push all those out i guess). right now ive got about 40 peppermint shrimp in the tank and half are about to lay eggs which will be great for the babies to eat. since ive got about 50 lbs of live rock in the sump i think ill add it to the tank to provide more hiding spaces for the babies. i think im gonna go with the "live and let die" approach and just let the babies hatch in the tank then ill just pull out a dozen or so that i can find and put them in seperate breeder nets and try a few individually.

coulpe questions though for the more experienced...

1) are the adult peppermint shrimp going to go for the baby octos or should they be fine if kept fed?(if they are then they are not a problem to catch really)

2)what size food should i have ready for the babies? copopods, mysids, 1/4 inch shore shrimp?

3) depending on my success does anyone want one if i can easily catch some extras for the breeder nets? (i figure the fewer in the tank the less likely cannibalisim will occur)

4)ive got one of those big filters over my power head in the tank so i think that will be fine but for my overflow (hang on back skimmer box) whats the best solution for safeguarding that? im thinking of getting the tube filters and cutting slots in them then sliding them over the teeth of the box, just gonna have to clean them regularly.


anyway sorry bout the lenghthy post just never had to deal with large eggs... only small which were always unsuccessful. ill try to get some pictures up as soon as i can get a decent shot since the only way to see the eggs is by crawling under and behind the tank and peeking behind the back cover.

 

[Nancy]

I did succeed in rasing a little bimac to the age of about 4 1/2 months by the method you're going to use. I think she would have lived to adulthood if I had known she was there and had moved her to my big tank, but she didn't make herself visible until she was about 4 months old.

I put 6 day-old hatchlings into the tank. The tank was mature had had abundant mysids (I had stocked it with extras, too), copepods, amphipods, and very small crabs.

I wonder about the peppermint shrimp. Bristle worms are a danger too - they don't eat the hatchlings, but they go for the food a hatchling has captured, and in doing so chomp off a couple of legs (unfortunately, I've seen this as well as read about it). Some should survive. Briareus is cannabalistic, so they may eat each other, too. Tough world for little octopuses.

Good luck with this project. It would be good if a few others would take some hatchlings.

Nancy

 

[DWhatley]

Joefish,
I have only had mercatoris young and only one very successful hatching (my second hatching has not done very well but I still have 3 after almost 3 months of the tank bred group). My first group was very successful without cannibalism my second has been a disaster and most of the young have disappeared. I don't know if they escaped the net or were 100% eaten as I have only found 4 bodies, the rest havd just vanished (in a cup, the dead one I experimented with stayed wholely recoginizable for 4 days and seemed to dehydrate more than decay).

I believe your peps will eat all that hatch and stay in the tank. They can be very aggressive and the diver I do some web work for has seen them gang up on convicts and systematically kill and consume them.

I have no clue if my experience will translate to a different species of octopus but ... I have been feeding small shore shrimp and Cyclop-eeze to the baby Mercs. With the first, more successful batch, I included new hatch brine in the mix (there were only 6 hatchlings and 5 survived, all living in the same net until about 3 months old, then separated into 2 and 3 for another 2 months, then placed in aquariums at 5 months - your survivers will grow larger much faster). If I were to do it over again, I would include the new hatch brine with the Cyclop-eeze and wait another month before introducing the shrimp but I don't know if feeding the live food earlier with the second batch encouraged cannibalisim or if there was any impact at all. I journaled the hatchling experiences if you want to browse for my actions and reactions ;>): [Octopus Eggs]: - Trapper's Babies - Tank Raised Mercatoris

Animal Mother just got a very small Briarius and should be able to give good idea on feeding once they are a little larger.

I would be more than willing to try to raise a hatchling or two and will have a large enought tank ready after my Mercs die of old age (sometime in the next two months, they are almost 11 months old now). The three little ones will take the smaller tank that now houses Sisturus and Medusa and the larger tank will be vacant. We have expected to put a Briarius in that tank once we lost the majority of the hatchlings so it would be great to have one that is tank raised.

 

[joefish84]

i can easily catch the shrimp out of the aquarium thats not so much a problem. as for bristleworms i really dont ever see any in my tank for some reason. when i put all the rock back in the main tank ill have around 150 lbs of live rock in there which should provide plenty of rock work for the little fellas. what ill probably do is set up about 8 breeder nets and try to catch as many as i can to put in there so ive got a more controlled situation with them.

on a second note, does anyone know an easy way to catch pods and mysids aside from pulling up seaweed and shaking it out? i live right on charleston harbor and its not hard to find places with lots of both, i just need to find an efficient method to catch lots.

 

[joefish84]

heres some pics. the egg mass is almost as large as her mantle so its definitly alot of eggs. took her all night to lay them.

full of questions...

bout how long is the hatch time frame for briareus? the last octo i had was a dwarf (i think o alecto) and it took about 4-5 weeks if i remember correctly.

 

[joefish84]

haha didnt even notice the cardinal fish in the picture on the right trying to look into the den(top right corner with the red eye)... guess i gotta try and get him out over the next few weeks

on another note good news shes happily taking frozen shrimp. she must have been hungry after laying the eggs...