Inkler - O'Briareus

Time to order more crabs! I have to say since their arrival, I have only lost 3. Inkler is doing well. She caught my sally light foot. I had hope they would cohabitate and that did seem to be the case until the other day when I noticed new body parts that did not look like fiddlers. I think my hermits are disappearing as well. She still is very secretive and one night when the parrot refused to stop beeping like the microwave at 11PM, I shut off her light, and in the morning total mischief in the tank. You could tell she was everywhere so I'm thinking maybe I need to invest in that red light. I was hoping with leaving the light on, she would adapt to coming out whether it was on or off, but obviously she prefers the dark.
 
I got 20 more Fiddlers in last week. Inkler is now eating 2 crabs a feeding. She comes out of her den to jump on the crab, as now I drop them in so she can hunt them. She still looks very young. Does come out in the light when she is hungry. Still not real interactive yet, but I guess as she gets more and more confidant in her world, she will.
 
Inkler had her first "taste" of locally caught crabs today. Jess and I stopped at the Inlet and it just happened to be dead low. I was thrilled to see the crabs are back as I only have about 4 fiddlers left from the last shipment. Interesting is a bait and tackle shop I stopped at before I hit the inlet said they are not ordering in fiddlers as suppliers are not carrying them because of the high loss. Anyway Inkler ate one small local crab and then found a larger one I had put in so last I looked she was dining on the large one! We have about 10 of them so I may need to hit the rocks once more before Wed. as we leave for Costa Rica, flying out at 7am out of Newark so my son Kevin will have inkler duties while we are gone!
 
Happy to say Inkler survived my absence thanks to Kevin!!! She has not grown much at all! She has been coming out more but runs when we approach the tank. I need to start hand feeding again as she has been hunting them down on her own. I noticed there has been some excavating going on in a couple areas. I must say I miss having a bimac but am happy to have an octopus again in the house going on 4 months!!
 
You mention the dialated pupil, that was the tip off that there was something wrong with my O. briareus. Never had seen it look that way before. He looked normal in every other way, he usually displayed very dark coloring and retained it in death.
Something to watch for as a warning sign.
 
I just wonder on her size as she still is very small for a Briarius. Maybe has doubled in size. I have not seen the dilated pupil since that one time. She's active but very secretive but that could be cause her playmate was away for a week!
 
RIP Inkler....I found her yesterday morning gone...Remember a few octopuses back I questioned the growth rate and wondered if sometimes we acquire the ones that would not make it in the wild, but because we have them in a safe environment they live longer than they would have? I think this was the case with Inkler. She never grew to the size a Briarieus should be. Her size was , curled up, the size of silver dollar. I noticed she had stopped eating about a week or so ago and was doing that pacing that they do with the enlarged pupils. Water quality is fine.
 
Sorry about Inkler. In humans there is a condition called "failure to thrive". Seems like she had a similar problem.

RIP Inkler :angelpus:

Nancy
 
Size has been a large varient in the briareus but Inkler was by far the smallest. It may be that she/he was much older (thus no sign of huge growth rates) and was much older than assumed. Until this one, I have thought that briareus was one of the few we could use size to gauge age.
 

Shop Amazon

Shop Amazon
Shop Amazon; support TONMO!
Shop Amazon
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon and affiliated sites.
Back
Top