H.P. Lovecraft - A. aculeatus... I think...

I found HP today. Her arms were all corkscrewed. It looks like I found her before the shrimp and crabs could get to her. Here is her postmortem picture and measurements.

HP.jpg
 
Sorry to see her go but if she did brood infertile eggs as you suspect, she lived quite a long time afterwards. From the little I have found in reading and my own experince, the smaller the clutch, the more likely the mother will live a little beyond hatching time.

As much as final pictures like this are so sad, I want to thank Sedna for coming up with the simple ruler idea and am glad others are thinking to do this as it will help a lot with sizing over time.
 
I am almost relieved to tell you the truth. I thought she was unhappy in captivity. The eggs and that it wasn't until the last month that she hid all the time makes me feel a little better about it. I tried multiple things to help her but she wasn't very friendly towards me and I ended up mostly just leaving her alone. I only went into the tank to get food bits and to make sure she was still alive, and of course water changes. I think she did lay eggs early on... maybe 2 weeks after she hid and started actively finding dens. In that case I think D is right that she did live quite a bit longer. It makes me sad but I had expected it for a while so its not as hard as I thought it was going to be.

I have already been looking for a new octopus but haven't found any. Tom wont have any till at least November so we will see when I will get a new one. The local fish stores can order common octopus but if I'm not mistaken that would be O. vulgaris.

I have been watching a mostly empty tank for so long that its been like she died a month ago for me. The tank has been kind of depressing to be honest.
 
Sorry about HPL. RIP :angelpus:

She probably wasn't unhappy in captivity - she was just a reclusive octopus.

As for the common octopus, yes, it's vulgaris, but usually they provide an octopus, could be any species.

Nancy
 
Lmecher;158957 said:
:goodbye: HP
So sorry to hear your news. She certainly was a dainty little thing. I feel for you, this is never easy. :sad:

She was small. She would fit in the palm of my hand. Compared to the one I got from Tom she was TINY! But she was great. I will probably wait till November to get another octopus but I would need to ask Tom to take pics for me before he sends me one as I do not want to end up with O. vulgaris like you did... though there is no guarantee either way.

I think I will wait a while as my smaller 35 gallon tank is having problems so I decided to move the fish and corals today back to the larger tank. I also have somethings I want to do before I get another octo, like getting a canopy with either compact lighting or T5's so I can change out the lighting for day or night octos.

Since its gonna take some time I should put the time to good use too. Also with hurricane season here.... the potential problems are more than I really want to deal with.
 

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