Hindenburg- O. Mercatoris

The mercs usually keep a "door" for their dens (I don't recall the males doing this as I think about it) even when not brooding. Give her some small pieces of LR and light weight shells to choose from. They often swap the doors for some reason. If she is comfortable the door will not stay in place much of the time. I suspect closing the doors allows them to sleep some but Sleazy rarely uses hers now.

Unfortunatey, you will not have to house Hindenberg for very long after the babies hatch. Even though Trapper lived an additional 11 weeks, the chances are significantly higher that she will die within a week of the hatching (for mercs hatching appear to last from 3 to 10 days). I raised the young in breeder nets for 5 months in a 45 with decent filtration. You will need to do a lot of water changes in a 10 (probably a 30% daily exchange - just guessing) so my suggestion is nets in the large tank at least until you get them eating larger foods. Fortunately your fish and any meat eating corals you have should enjoy the Cyclop-eeze if you choose to use it.

The large egged animals usualy have a smaller egg count than the small egg sepecies. Trapper only had 6 hatchlings (very low and not normal) where Miss Broody may have had 100 (not sure many escaped the net and I could not determine who was returned and who was new). Oddly, you can only expect 4 - 6 survivors (canabalism does not seem to be an issue). If Hindenberg is joubini, you will likely have one or two days, a week at most, with several hundred young before they all perish. The merc young can be caught on the glass and removed with a turkey baster. Joubini young will not go to the glass or other substrate.
 
what are the odds it isnt a merc? shes not in her den now..in full ambient light. and she has alot of shells, she just hasnt seen fit to seal herself off when in the pvc...she looks like she might be breathing heavy...end in sight?

i bought a dozen ghost shrimp for her..way too fast. i should have rethough that theory. one actually walked up to her while she was out of her den..it looked like she tried to catch it..but it was gone way too fast. any other ideas on what to try feeding her? wish i knew someplace to get a live shore shrimp nearby

so far no to live crabs, fresh dead shrimp, and ghost shrimp.
 
Ghost shrimp and their brackish water cousins are hard to tell apart (execpt you may lose all the glass shrimp from the salt content). Try netting one of the shrimp, killing it and offering it on some kind of stick (pipettes work well, they are difficult to skewer). You can also damage one so that it will not swim well and try dropping it into her den but I get squimish doing this. Other than that, I have had good luck with Cyclop-eeze for getting at least some nutrition to fasting octos (evidenced by their elimination that does not digest the red color).

Heavy breathing is never good but it may be that she is laying eggs. Watch her eyes to note if they get very wide for a few seconds. This seems to be something that may be common at egg laying time (based on a couple of similar observations when I mentioned seeing it with Maya).
 
i think she might be laying eggs in the back of the pvc..because everyone in a while she retreats to the back of it stays there for a short while then comes back to the front to sleep. a shot shrimp walked inside the pipe a little while ago and she blew it away. so i don't think its going to entice her to eat either. how long can they live without food? I'm guna go buy some Cyclop-eeze either tomorrow or Monday..not sure if my lfs is open Sundays. I did find out one fish store in my area knows something about mercs and babies..so im guna go talk to them on Monday to some depth and see what advice they can give me. the owner there told me to try a crayfish and said hes gotten brooding octos to take them before. and being texas you would think id know where to buy a live one...but i have no ideaXD
 
Crayfish was reported as being eaten by a brooding female just recently but I forgot which post :old: and I want to include them in my offerings to Puddles if I can find some.

Not eating can typically be three things. Normal brooding behavior, scenecence or just not hungry. The female GPO broods for about 10 months and eats little or none. If she is brooding she should live until the babies hatch, we have only had a very few that did not and I don't recall any hatchings after a death so those eggs may have not been fertile if they still existed. Recently I asked Roy how long he was seeing infertile eggs remain with the female and we both noted about 2 weeks as the time span before they disintegrated. I think Trapper lived longer after brooding because she did eat most of the brood time and would take Cyclop-eeze (but nothing else) afterwards. This may not be at all the reason for her extended survival though as we are pretty sure at this point that they don't actually starve to death as is so often written. There death is pretty much preprogrammed and not eating is a sign of entering the end of their life, not the cause of it. I do wonder about dehydration though and can't find anything that addresses it.

All you can do is encourage her without driving her crazy (and wasting precious enegy) and see what happens. With Maya, I would make a point to "pet" the glass in front of her den any time I went by. It did not upset her and always made ME feel better that I could at least give he a little attention in her miserable state.

Edit: Sulley posted that his brooding briareus found crayfish acceptable after rejecting everything else.
 
when an octo lays eggs..where do they come out 0-o? i noticed hindenburg has been very still fore a few hours so i checked her pvc pipe and she wasnt at the entrance...shes inside the pipe in a very peculiar way. its the first time since ive gotten her she didnt have at least one eye on me...her arms are moving wildly as well as heavy breathing every now and then with rests with her being completely still mixed in.
 
I started to answer through that do everything siphon but got to thinking I was not totally sure so went hunting for confirmation and found this terrific write-up Mucktopus (Dr. Christine Huffard) did while she was still a doctorial student under Roy Caldwell.

Did the arm movement look something like this?
What you are seeing in SueNami's video is considered grooming behavior but my own observations suggest that stress may be involved with the reaction.
 
remotely closee..not exactly. She exited the den shortly after i noticed that behavior and once again is living in the plastic tank. I have a video ofr her 8 min out of the cover of dens time. I'll try and post it later..going to try and find a light to peak in the pvc for egg


do octos go blind often? after watching that video of her moving it strikes me she might be blind which is why she houses where light can hit her. when she moves ive noticed she uses her legs to poke around like a blind mans cane.. again youll be able to tell more once i get the video up. ill have it up by morning at any rate/
 
With the mercs, I have suspected that the reason they never adapt to daylight is that it hurts their eyes. During the last week of life and occassionally leading up to that week they will often been seen wandering during the day and Imy conclusion has been that they have lost much but not all of their sight. We have an old journal that a keeper saw his octo (I don't remember the species but is was not dwarf) lose its sight but it still lived for many weeks. The thought are strictly antecdotal but they do seem to fit the most observed behavior.

On the other hand, the three brieareus I have kept seem to be very far sighted and can't see anything that is closer than about 8 inches but can focus on something 20 feet away (like my son coming down the stairs). I don't know if this is a genetic trait to the octos local to an area or if it is common for the entire species. I keep meaning to ask CaptFish if he notices it with Legs since Legs was caught in a much different location. The effect of this is that same feeling around for food appearance when they move.
 

still being proccessed and youtubes general degredation of quality take away a bit..but its still decent to see her movement and breathing

oh and sorry for the audio..i forget this camera has a mic
 
dwhatley;150504 said:
. I keep meaning to ask CaptFish if he notices it with Legs since Legs was caught in a much different location. The effect of this is that same feeling around for food appearance when they move.

With Legs I'm confused, at times she seems to have great vision reacting to things I'm doing in the distance and noticing small movements in her tank, and the tank near hers. Yet when she is catching shrimp it seems like she cant see it, even though it is right there. I would almost venture to say she is Near sighted. When she moves around she touches and feels everything but from what I have seen most octos do that. So I have no concrete evidence either way but she seems to see distance better than objects close up.
 
Doing a little searching, I did not find the post that I was looking for but I did see a note Carol wrote about one of her female octopuses going blind and living a few months after laying eggs. I also found this quote from Jean (Portabello Aquarium) regarding aging symptoms

blind (opaque eyes like a cateract!)..
 
CaptFish, seeing things better at a distance IS being farsighted so we ARE seeing the same thing. That is good to know as I have always wondered if there was something about the location or coming from the trappers that caused this condition. Since Legs was found well north and you described how you caught your "jelly fish" I am more comfortable with the vision issues being natural to this species.
 
She seems to be doing alot better..she came out pretty fast after lights out last night and explored some. She has now realized she can move all over the tank through the pvc...and all the openings have a pile of marbles in front of them and shes moving all over. I'm hoping since her activity is improving she might decide to eat a crab. this does make it really hard to find her lol but its a more appropriate way to den than denning at the front of the pipe where light shines on her
 

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