ID help request

Joined
Sep 29, 2022
Messages
9
Location
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Hi 👋🏼 I’m new to this, I’ve wanted to keep an octopus ever since I started keeping a reef tank.

The LFS wasn’t able to properly ID my octopus and I was wondering if anyone here would possibly be able to help.

Added a few photos below in his different forms that I managed to capture

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Solution
This octopus is an O. cyanea, also known as the Reef Octopus, the Day Octopus, the Big Blue Octopus, the Big Red Octopus (clear evidence that colour is an unreliable way to classify octopuses!), among others.

However, certain characteristic PATTERNS can help. This species is well known for its very elegant, clean, bilateral colour bifurcations (e.g., black on one side, white on the other). That was my first clue. The second was the shape of the sort of ‘knob’ of flesh around each eye, containing radial striations that i and nearly every ceph biologist tend to call its ‘eyelashes’. Thirdly, mantle morphology (I just know that shape so well after studying this species for so long) and its apparently extreme adeptness at colour/texture...
This octopus is an O. cyanea, also known as the Reef Octopus, the Day Octopus, the Big Blue Octopus, the Big Red Octopus (clear evidence that colour is an unreliable way to classify octopuses!), among others.

However, certain characteristic PATTERNS can help. This species is well known for its very elegant, clean, bilateral colour bifurcations (e.g., black on one side, white on the other). That was my first clue. The second was the shape of the sort of ‘knob’ of flesh around each eye, containing radial striations that i and nearly every ceph biologist tend to call its ‘eyelashes’. Thirdly, mantle morphology (I just know that shape so well after studying this species for so long) and its apparently extreme adeptness at colour/texture changes. (IME, they’re the best-camouflaged in the octopus world; indeed, of all creatures except the cuttlefish Sepia latimanus and Sepia apama, to the best of our knowledge.

Anyroad, you have, in my opinion, at least, one of the cleverer octopus species, you will absolutely want to make certain your tank is locked down tight, and that there’s room in that tank for him to grow, as O. cyanea can grow to be a fairly hefty cephalopod, with an arm-span of up to a metre in the wild.

Please keep us updated! She’s an absolute stunner—a real beauty—and I’d love to watch him grow and develop. My particular area of interest is ceph communication, and O. cyanea is one of the more expressive occies, along with O. tetricus and O. vulgaris.
 
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Solution
Thank you everyone for the responses!

It has been an exiting week so far, introduced pulsing xenia and GSP corals in an attempt to keep his space entertaining and I will slowly be introducing macro algae into his environment.

If anyone has any advice on how to play with them or how to help him feel more calm around me, please share
 
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