Izzy and Bee - O.Mercatoris

[Lmecher]

Am I understanding correctly, you have no other lights on this tank besides the red light? I am planning to have daylights on mine along with the red on 24 hrs. I am going to have the daylights come on ar 5 am and off at 5 pm. Do you have any corals in their tank?

 

[CaptFish]

Yup just red lights and no white/day light.My house is all windows and naturally very light during the day. And no no coral in that tank just Live rock a mix of Florida and Fiji.

 

[CaptFish]

I continue to see empty shells appearing and a few crab shells but I have not actually seen either Merc in two weeks. If another week goes by and I don't actually see them I going to go digging for them an maybe transfer them into my 30 gallon tank which I just finished octo proofing.

 

[Lmecher]

Thats too bad that you haven't seen them. I don't exactly much more of Zuzu than an eye or an arm but she is in th barnacle cluster. I have been succseesully feeding her a tiny sliver of shrimp with my make-shift feeding stick nightly. I think moving them would be a good idea but...oh to find them. Good luck with that, you"ll need it.

 

[CaptFish]

Moving wont be that hard I would simply remove all the live rock very slowly and carefully. the transfer both octos and a few pieces of LR into the 30.

 

[DWhatley]

IF you can find them. They tend to get INTO the LR and can be hard to find so be sure to put the LR in a bucket of water as you are removing it.

 

[CaptFish]

I'm going to give them one more week in this tank, if i don't see them by next Monday I am going to try the move. I have a brand new 55 gal plastic drum that I use for making water and curing rock. So I will remove most of the water into the drum then transfer each piece of LR into the bucket until I find them. If I dont find them cause they are in the live rock I'll address it when it happens.

 

[DWhatley]

Have you tried the barnacles (not the dinner plate sized - still would like to see that picture ) facing the front? I'm not sure why they seem to like them so well but at least the females seem to find them desirable even in a large tank.

 

[CaptFish]

I have two small clusters of them, I never saw the octopuses uses them but the crabs and snails seem to love them. I'll see if i can get a copy of the picture for you.

 

[DWhatley]

I'll take a wild guess and suggest you may have a pair of males. My males would den in the shells but would move dens frequently and only chose them on occassion. In the 45, one male would den in them to visit the resident female about once a month but even then he did not always use the same shell. Miss Broody went to the cluster directly after being freed from the breeder net and I only saw her move to a lower shell for 24 hours, allowing the serpent to clean house. Up until Sleasy, I have only kept males (Sisturus and Medusa together and later Wiley by himself) in the 15 and they moved dens every couple of weeks, only occassionaly using the banacles. Sleazy, like Miss Broody, once finding the shells has only moved to a different shell once and then returned to her original den the next day. Needless to say, my experience has been limited but there does seem to be a pattern in the behavior.

 

[sedna]

I hope you do finally see them. That's one of the reasons I don't keep mercs anymore, I never saw them out before 11 pm and that's just not rewarding enough for my husband and kids. They said if I'm going to give the "big" tank over to one octo, they wanted to see "swim around fish" and polyps in the 20 gal. I still think I'll try them again eventually- the fact that they are large egged it too tempting!

 

[CaptFish]

I found one!!!! not sure which it is but she is hiding in super tiny little crevice in about the middle level of the LR pile. I'll try a snap a pic but I'm not sure if you will see anything

 

[CaptFish]

you cant really see her in the photo that well, but I tried...

 

[DWhatley]

It is amazing how fast your forgive them for being absent when you find them alive

Am I seeing a "rock" octopus eye and arm here or could the other one be just around the corner?

 

[Lmecher]

Very happy to see you found one. Have you found evidence of them feeding? I cannot see much more of Zuzu than what you see of Bee/Izzy. Zuzu never refuses shrimp I offer her, as soon as it comes near she grabs it. Have you tried to feed her?