burnthestatus;100792 said:
Thanks greatly for all of your comments.
In response to Monty's question, I believe space is the one obstacle dictating us to house dwarfs. I don't know the space requirements for bimacs, briareus, or O. Rubsecens, and whether they need additional maintenance equipment, (i.e. chiller, as monty mentioned), but I would certainly like to find these things out as well as where and for what price these other recommended species can be purchased for research. For now, it seems that the dwarf species are the most cost and maintenance effective. And, they seem to be readily available. Any links out to suppliers of these other species would be greatly appreciated.
Having said that, I am very interested in pursuing research on dwarfs as well (getting of the beaten track, as monty aptly suggested), especially studying its behavior with other non-octo mates, as dwhatley offered. I think monitoring their nightly escapades on video is another option. We’re thinking of bringing them in sometime late October—is that too early if we want them to live for several months?
Again, thanks to everyone for their help and time.
Danthemarineman has a number of
mercatoris he needs to sell before a move, see the "octopus availability" thread.
Although there seem to be seasonal variations on availability, I haven't really worked out what they are for what species. One problem with dwarf species is that there isn't a good source for tank-raised ones, and since joubini is a small-egged species, it's unlikely there ever will be (although some species are sold by places like the NRCC only to professional researchers, which would work for you but not the hobbyists... but they only list bimacs at the moment.) Mercatoris has the advantage, as Dwhatley has shown, that it's possible to tank-raise them. If this isn't obvious, the benefit to this is that you would know the exact age of the octopus you're getting, while if you had a wild-caught animal, it is frequently very close to the end of its short lifespan. Collectors are also notoriously ignorant about this sort of thing; often, mature dwarf species are sold as baby vulgaris, for example.
Another consideration for getting them at the end of October is what your resources are. Since you're at a university, I'm not clear if you're coming into an existing lab to do this work. If you're starting from scratch, we recommend a 3 month period for the tanks to cycle and stabilize before getting an octopus. If the lab already has the 5 tanks you mention cycled, stable, and running, or if you are plumbed into a fresh or recirculated water systems as part of a larger system (as is common in large research facilities) then this might not be an issue. Of course, you'll still need to octo-proof the tanks so your animals don't escape, and make sure that tank-mates, decoration, lighting, and such are appropriate. If you want to study dwarfs behaviorally, I suspect you'll want to minimize the tank decorations so that they have relatively few hiding places, but enough that they aren't stressed out by the lack of hiding places.
I had some ideas for sneaky ways to study shy nocturnal octos, both as I mentioned above LED laser diodes with diffusers to get a very narrow-spectrum red light that (hopefully) will be invisible to the octos, and also, to go along with that, it might be possible to provide the octo with a den that's made of plastic that's transparent to red light but opaque to blue/green, something like the red acrylic tubing here:
http://www.tapplastics.com/shop/product.php?pid=143&PHPSESSID=200708310920041268293209
(note that I just found that with a google search, so I can't vouch for the quality or safety, although it's pretty hard to make plexiglass dangerous to octos... it might be worth asking what they dope it with to make it red, though, and make sure it doesn't leech out in water and that it's not copper-based.)
I'd been meaning to mention my
ideas to you, too, Dwhatley, although you seem to have the dwarf-rearing thing down, so changing the lighting might add stress more than improve things any....
to TONMO! I'm not sure of the details for joubini in particular, but most dwarf species tend to be nocturnal, shy, and relatively short-lived (e.g. 6 months or so.) Dwhatley's "Trapper" was a mercatoris that broke a number of these stereotypes, though. 
