[Octopus]: Davy Jones - O. hummelincki

GREAT video! I wonder what he was looking for in the substrate just after he captured his shrimp. Good idea on for showing scale too!

Thanks! I think the video came out much better than all the pictures I've tried to take of him. It also illustrates his personality pretty well. He's very enthusiastic when it comes to eating. Sometimes, he takes the vial, contents and all, and retreats with the entire thing back to his favorite hiding place.

Another thing I forgot to mention, at about the 0:09 - 0:13 mark, you can see his split third arm pretty well.

I'm not sure what he was digging around in the substrate for either (I actually hadn't noticed it til you mentioned it). I took this video a while ago, right after I first started feeding him using the "vial" method. It could be he was still unsure what to expect, or was still hungry, and was looking for more food.
 
Missed the split arm after four repeats of that section :old: but rewatching all the arms, I think the arms searching the substrate are doing the same thing that the arms getting the vial shrimp are doing, maybe a reflexive type motion.
 
Missed the split arm after four repeats of that section :old: but rewatching all the arms, I think the arms searching the substrate are doing the same thing that the arms getting the vial shrimp are doing, maybe a reflexive type motion.

Hm, maybe it's easier for me to spot because I know what to look for.

So one thing I noticed more recently (the past 2 days or so) is that Davy appears to be a lot more active. He usually just sits in the same spot on a rock. He's usually out in the open, but camoflauged white with dark spots to blend in to the rock. Recently though, he's been exploring the back and sides of the tank. His movements don't seem to be paniced, but he does move with a certain sense of purpose or urgency. The thing is though, he doesn't appear to be moving to any particular place, and will often change directions, go back to where he already was, then go off in a completely different direction.

Additionally, while he's usually a mottled-white color while sitting on the rocks, when he's doing this aimless wondering, he's usually a tan brown to a very dark, almost black, brownish color.

Does anything about this behavior sound unusual? He's still eating normally; that is to say, he eats daily and voraciously.
 
Hey @tonmo, thanks for checking in :smile:

Davy appears to be doing just fine. He's still wandering about the tank in the evening, but as with last week, he's not appearing to be stressed (at least to my untrained eye). He's also still eating.

I took a short video of his wandering routine (sorry for the bad video quality). The video is still processing so it might not be avaialble in HD just yet. Let me know if anything about this seems stressed or problematic:

 
Do you leave the blue light on all night? If so, try turning is off. It is thought that blue is actually worse than white light. In the past, we noticed one of ours wandering at night (O. hummelincki should be sleeping) and realized that our red night light had been reset with a power outage, causing him to miss his beauty sleep.
 
Thanks for the reply @DWhatley. His light is completely off at night. The room isn't pitch black, but it's pretty close. There are no moonlights on any of my other tanks. The only possible sources of light are things like the status LEDs on a Reefkeeper controller, an Ecotech pump controller, and a Jebao dosing pump. It's also a dedicated aquarium room with blackout curtains, so once the last light goes off (which happens to be the light on Davy's tank), the room is pretty dark til morning.

Does anything seem particularly troubling to you about the way he was moving in the video? That was probably taken around 8 PM or so, which is about two hours before his light turns off. Once the lights go out, he seems to be pretty stationary. I can always find him in his favorite spot on his favorite rock.

Thanks again for replying to this thread so regularly :smile:
 
No, ET is often on the front of his tank and wanders too. It was only the blue lights that made me think to mention sleep. I suspect both octos are on the hunt for mates.
 
Davy has not eaten for the past two days and refused food today also. He has also stopped roaming around the tank, and has gone back to perching on one rock and staying there.

The only change that has been made in the tank is with the light. The light was heavy in the blue spectrum, probably around 3% white, 5% blue and 10% royal blue. I changed the light to a more balanced 5/5/5 on all channels. He ate after that change, so I did not assume him to be bothered by the lighting change. I've since changed the lights back.

I performed a ~10% water change (5 gallons) the first day he refused food. The second day (yesterday), I got a bit concerned and did a 25% change (10 gallons). I'm not sure what to do now that he refused food for a third day. I tried actually taking the piece of shrimp to him and touching his arm with it, but he just shot water at me.

Does anyone have any ideas what might be going on?
 
As you are trying not to guess, this may be the beginning of senescence. You can try offering smaller pieces of food. If you are hand feeding, try using a feeding stick and placing the smaller piece close to the beak. Sometimes this helps stimulate an interest in eating. You can also try putting a small live crab (fiddlers work well and can often be found in pet stores when you only want one or two - online is way cheaper for regular feedings). I gave ET a piece of raw fish yesterday (tuna I think but I keep a few small pieces of raw fish vacuum sealed and frozen to give a change of food options when they tend to not eat well. Also, check your salinity. Even though I have been using the same brand and mixing the same way for years, I found my salinity was low in all my tanks last week.
 

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