Diego - O. bimaculoides

[DWhatley]

NEVER TREAT A DISPLAY TANK WITH ANTIBIOTICS! Topic treatment for cephalops is next to useless but if you want to try treat topically than a QT tank is REQUIRED.

I just guess on the amount of tetracycline and I won't claim it is a consistent dose each day. With the larger animals, I dig a hole in the shrimp, cover the hole with the powder and push it into the shrimp with a stick then repeat two or three times (depending on how well it went into the hole . Then I soak the shrimp in saltwater and work the stuffed part in an attempt to get it well embedded and somewhat liquified (it is quite bitter). There is a lot of the capsule left over and two would be enough for 10 days if I kept the remaining powder but I don't like keeping open drugs around because of the dog so I toss the rest each day. I would be more resourceful if I did not have plenty though.

One thing I should note. I have mentioned believing I have had success with this method now three times. There IS the possibility that the animal would recover on their own but I gave the medication as the infection seemed to be getting worse and believe it had a major impact. Where I have not seen it do any good is in senescent animals. Part of the problem there is to get them to eat but even then it may not help.

No temp changes, the AC is on and the chiller has been holding steady without much effort at 71 (set at 69 with an allowed 2 degree varience). I do check the water with two other thermometers (one stick-on and one digital) and they actually show the tank itself to be a degree lower.

 

[corw314]

I love the lego video and great idea stuffing the holes with prawn. How is Diego's eye issue? Any improvement?

 

[DWhatley]

The eye swelling pretty much disappeared after 5 days. He refused to take shrimp at about day 6 to the point that if I put it in his den when he would not come out, he would manuver it out to the front of the tank, look at me and blow it at me . The taste is very bitter and I when I treated a couple of others with it I saw a similar refusal near the time I would have stopped giving the antibiotic anyway. He totally refused even unspiked shrimp for about a week (but gladly took anything else) and eventually the white spot directly on the eye also disappeared. He has become a bit more shy and had a hickup I see from time to time but there are no other signs of infection.

We moved him to the breakfast room this morning where we can see and be seen more often. Fortunately, our return pump would not handle going through the chiller and returning to the tank so we used a second pump to feed the chiller. This made moving the chiller much simpler. I did not take photos of the move but should have as it went very smoothly and two bodies were not critical. The fish mover gadget that I picked up is really great for moving octopuses (except adult briareus because they are too large) and everyone we have moved using the thing was curious about it, climbed in on their own and stayed in for the move.

I did take a video tonight of him inspecting the length of the tank (much longer but about half as high) and will post it and a few photos tomorrow. This is a larger tank (somewhere between 62 and 65 gallon) with a much larger sump. I would not say he outgrew the other tank nor that he was uncomfortable and there were no escape attempts (something I partially attribute to not liking the environment) but we missed having an octopus in the tank and decided the chiller could handle the volume during the winter easily (we discovered, for reasons unknown, this tank automatically stays cooler than the others in the room even in the summer). When we set up the chiller, it only took a couple of hours to bring down the temperature and we had expected it to take overnight.

We think LittleBit can see him and is curious because she was out and actively moving on her tank wall right after we put him in the tank. She would only be able to see one corner of the tank and she may just have been trying to get us to feed her (yesterday was fast day) but it appeared that the was interested in the other tank. I considered moving Little bit to either this or the split tank but don't want to change ANYTHING about her environment to cause her body to go into reproduction mode. Hopefully putting a male ocotpus in the room will not accelerate egg laying. I really so much prefer having a male because of the extra time you get with them.

 

[DWhatley]

After a month and a half in the breakfast room, Diego is still very shy and reclusive. He eats well but does not come out while we are there for anything but eating. I have seen him on the glass at night when I have forgotten to turn off the white fluorescents under the stairs (as dim lighting) and wonder if the the eye infection has made his eye sensitive to light. We only have one set of bulbs in the double set available in our (60 watt I think) light fixture on during the day but I am going to try turning them all off around 5:00PM to see if there is any effect. As mentioned in Little Bit's thread we did see him out dancing on the glass one night recently and had hoped that meant he would start being more social but is seems it was a one time occurance. We moved Little Bit to a tank that is in direct line of site so if they were noticing each other, perhaps this will bring him out more.

 

[CaptFish]

wowzer! gorgeous!

 

[DWhatley]

Not Exactly a Cuddley Dog and Kitten but ...

That is where my mind went when I saw these two tonight



We have found that this particular species of brittle star is very touchy with the octopuses. When there is no octopus in the tank, we rarely see them but they are almost always to be found near an octopus and will come out at feeding time when one is in residence. I keep them in each of the octopus tanks and they are all named Pesky for this habit.

 

[DWhatley]

Diego became very reclusive after his eye infection. The antibiotics (or time) cleared the swelling but the eye pupil continued to show a milky white, cateract looking opaque dot. He ate about once every three days during this period (several months) and was rarely seen. Since LittleBit has come to sexual maturity, we have started to see him out more and more during the day as well as at night but not during our normal super hour (the most common time our others would come out). This last month he will even interact for a short time about once a week. His color is stronger (it often has looked dull and faded) and he looks like a younger animal than as little as a month ago. The spot on his eye has become an open circle rather than the original opaque dot. I have no clue what it might be and did not expect it to change. He is also eating about 5 times a week but he still has a very weak grasp (especially compared to the strength of LittleBit up until this last week).

 

[SabrinaR]

Hes looking good, I am glad hes still with you.

 

[DWhatley]

Loss of Equilibrium

Sadly, after 11 months in the aquarium, Diego is in his last days. 5 Days ago he suffered some type of internal failure and can no longer detect which way is up. I have seen something that appeared somewhat similar but not the same with Sisturus. In Sisty's case, I second guessed the possibility of heart failure of one of the gill hearts as half his body was paralyzed. Deigos motions are somewhat similar but all arms are functional.



Looking at the photograph, you can see that his eye is not aligned with the horizon. He can navigate the live rock without spinning but could not navigate the flat surfaces at all on the first day. He is still with me 5 days after this started and has slightly better results (I do not believe there has been any recovery, just a slight adjustment to the failure) trying to walk along the glass but still flips out of control when going between the glass and the live rock. He has been eating but failed to empty his crab leg tonight. He showed some interest in it after he pushed it out of his den but only poked around in it for a short time before abandoning it again.

He is still coming out and will come to my hand at night. I have tried massaging his mantle (that looks bloated) and he will allow me to do that for a minute or more as if it feels comfortable. He still knows the locations of things in his aquarium and will go to his den when he no longer wants attention as well as to sleep.

 

[DWhatley]

Diego's eye swelled to double normal size and the lid split so that it looked like two openings, then three. He does not orient either eye to the horizon and is daylight sensitive. He is still eating well and when the second eye started to swell, I put him on antibiotics for lack of any other ideas. Tetracycline fights both gram negative and gram positive but I started mixing in a small amount of Kanamycin because it was most effective with the seahorses and after 3 days I did not see a major improvement with the tetracycline). I am not sure it is bacterial but I have no real other options for treatment and the swelling needs to be reduced (he can detect light with the eye but that is all I know). The second split seems to have healed closed but not the original.

He comes out and spins around his tank (as in the video but with more control) almost as soon as the lights go out. If there is a light in the room, he will usually hang out in the brighter corner and will sometimes come to the interaction corner when he sees me. When he decides to interact, it is only for a short time but he never hurrys away. I have reduced his food offering to half a shrimp to try to get him to eat every day (he was eating a whole shrimp 5 days a week) and am spiking the shrimp with medication. Interestingly, he has started "licking" my fingers when I feed him. They are well covered in shrimp and medicine after preparing his food and he will use at least one arm to gently move his suckers along my finger without an attempt to pull my fingers to his mouth.

 

[DWhatley]

Diego has died

Diego died this afternoon after 13 months in my care. Considering all his health problems, his longevity was better than I expected and as long or longer as many of the captive raised from Zyan but less than half the time Joe-Ceph has experienced. I found him still breathing but being attacked by (and ignoring) the urchin and brissles so I moved him to a container to die in peace. He stopped breathing within an hour of the transfer.

 

[tonmo]

Sorry D. I will FB / tweet the thread later this evening.

 

[DWhatley]

Thanks Tony,

We expected him to be near the end but he has fooled us before. He had all but stopped eating a week ago and had stopped his nightly tank walks about the same time.

 

[AquaticEngineer]

So sorry to hear Denise.

Even when you know its coming its still tough especially when you put that much effort in.

 

[tonmo]

Facebook post here (which will also be posted to Twitter):

https://www.facebook.com/117709598273768/posts/380484195329639