• Looking to buy a cephalopod? Check out Tomh's Cephs Forum, and this post in particular shares important info about our policies as it relates to responsible ceph-keeping.

heeeeeeeeeeeeeee llllllllllllllllllllllllllllp!!!!!!!!

KMAN

Cuttlefish
Registered
Joined
May 26, 2004
Messages
22
me and some friends work at an aquarium in southern california and we were trying to start a breeding program with octos. at first we thought we had californicus but now we believe that we have two rubescens because of some green spots under the eyes and the depth that they were caught at. but anyways yesterday we were cleaning out the tanks and we were going to play with the octos when we found that the biggest one Xerox had eggs with little black eye spots. we noticed on monday that she had blocked her hiding place with her live rock but we didnt have time to do anything with her so we didnt bother her and yesterday we realized that she had already layed them. so we need to know everything: gestation period , clutch size, wether they hatch planktonic or bigger, wether they are large or small egg, ideas for nursery , and so on and so forth...
please please give any and all info even if you dont think it will help.
Thanx so much :notworth: :notworth: :notworth:
 
Re: heeeeeeeeeeeeeee llllllllllllllllllllllllllllp!!!!!!!!

Hello,

Which aquarium do you work at? Here is all the pertinent information I could find:

http://www.jimbolouislabs.com/eggjournal.htm
http://www.cephbase.utmb.edu/refdb/pdf/6300.pdf
http://is.dal.ca/~ceph/TCP/rearing.html

Octopus rearing is very challenging and failure-prone, and there is not much information available, because few people have experience.

Keep the hatchlings separate, so they don't eat each other. Put piping or something for them to hide under, else they will try to crawl out of the water and die. Feed them amphipods. Beyond that, you'll have to discover for yourself what works.

The powers that be have no doubt read all of your threads, so there's no need to keep posting them :wink:

-Brandon
 
If you have O. rubescens (Pacific Red Octopus), it will lay small eggs (3-4 mm long) and the young will be planktonic. Cephalopods: A World Guide mentions that the young often form large schools to feed on small shrimp (euphausids). These tiny young would be difficult to rear. You might try feeding mysid shrimp that you harvest along the shore - but maybe they would be too large.

O. californicus produces large eggs (up to 17 mm long) which would hatch into bottom-living young. These at least would be easier to raise.

I would strongly suggest you make contact with an aquarium or other institution that is raising octopuses and get more information. It's not easy to raise octopus hatchlings and proper feeding is very difficult.

I don't mean to sound negative, but several of us have tried this route ourselves and we were not successful. But I wish you good luck!

Nancy
 
thanx for info and im not just re posting and reposting because we just found the eggs in there and now we need to do something about it. does anybody noe the gestation period or clutch size appr.
THANX abunch
PS. tell everyone about this thread :biggrin2:
:notworth: :notworth: :notworth: :notworth: :notworth: :notworth: :notworth:
 
The gestation period will vary according to water temperatue - maybe 6 weeks is the average for what we've seen here on the site.

The number of eggs for a small-egged species can be in the thousands - it's less for large-egged species.

Nancy
 

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