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Latest on Octopets - Not good news

That's interesting.

I don't think we've seen a single O.bimaculatus in the past several years, so I imagine it's our friendly O. bimaculoides.

So maybe those of you who need octos should indicate more interest to the suppliers.

Nancy
 
I doubt that there's a market for a octo-as-a-pet industry that's profitable without having the price per octo raised. Either we get more poeple into this hobby or we'll have to signify that those that want octos as a pet would rather pay more than have no octos. As long as they can sell enough octos to go pass the break-even point and gather some proft, the'll start thinking about it.
 
Chrono War said:
I doubt that there's a market for a octo-as-a-pet industry that's profitable without having the price per octo raised. Either we get more poeple into this hobby or we'll have to signify that those that want octos as a pet would rather pay more than have no octos. As long as they can sell enough octos to go pass the break-even point and gather some proft, the'll start thinking about it.

If you raise the price, you sell less octos. When you're hatching hundreds at a time, you might as well sell as many of them as you can for as cheap as you can to get maximum revenue. Maybe a half dozen TONMO'ers will pay $100 for a bimac, but at the lower price you would have sold dozens to the "WhErE cAn i gEt a BloO RiNg" crowd.

The reason that Octopets was selling them real cheap is the same reason why internet startups lose hundreds of millions of dollars per year starting up...take Vonage, which lost over a $100m in the last three quarters. They've spent about $120m on marketing. As a result, a couple years after inception, the company has over one million subscribers. If they had started out trying to be immediately profitable, they'd have a few thousand customers and make a few million dollars or so. Now, in a year or two they can cut back their marketing and bring in hundreds of millions of dollars in profit.

I think octopus breeding could be profitable, but only under the right conditions. You need an aquarium fish operation that's big enough to have plenty of people standing around. I would say it is within the realm of many larger fish shops. This is how I interpret what Marine Depot told me: "Yeah, maybe we could make $500-$1000 a year on it. But for the amount of money that moves through here, that just isn't worth the effort." And they're right.

Even if a sole-proprietor had the equipment and the feed farm to start at no-cost, a year's worth of income wouldn't feed him/her for a month, much less a year. If we see captive-bred octopus again, it won't be someone's day job.

bmatson said:
What is the difference between O. bimaculoides and O.bimaculatus? Is it size? I remember something about the false eyespots being different.

Without going back to the library, I think the "link" structure of the eyespots is most diagnostic. They have small eggs with planktonic larvae, but you can hardly tell that from looking at them. I know I've heard it mentioned that the maximum size is different, but since that varies so much between different wild populations of O. bimaculoides, I'm skeptical of how useful this is.

I can't come up with a good reason why their octopus wouldn't be O. bimaculatus, though. The two species have a similar range, and I don't know about relative abundance. I kind of hope someone buys one or both of Marine Depot's octos and takes some pictures :smile:

Dan
 
Maybe I Can Help?

Hi, the name's Paul and I live at the beach in San Diego County. I'm just getting into aquariums and was researching octopuses as an option for my classroom tank (I'm a beginning grade school teacher, no $, and finishing the classroom tank requires $) and that's how I ended up here.

During lobster season (October to mid-March) I go out at night in my kayak with hoops/bait and pull up lobster (to eat). I usually pull up an eel or two every other day, and the last two weekends in a row, I've pulled up an octopus. I have no idea what kind they are. The first one was small - about 2" head and a 1 foot span. The second one had about a foot large head and it's span was over 6 feet. At least that's how it looked when it was running amok on my kayak in the darkness. It nearly kicked me out of my boat and into the ocean too.

I do dive once in a while so I could also look for eggs.

I am also awaiting my collection permits from the department of game and fish. I'm not sure of the legality of this, but perhaps we could help each other - Send you eggs or octopus, get $ or equipment for the classroom tank?

Just a thought.

-Paul

P.S. Of course the octopus were released back into the ocean.
 
Blesum said:
Hi, the name's Paul and I live at the beach in San Diego County. I'm just getting into aquariums and was researching octopuses as an option for my classroom tank (I'm a beginning grade school teacher, no $, and finishing the classroom tank requires $) and that's how I ended up here.

During lobster season (October to mid-March) I go out at night in my kayak with hoops/bait and pull up lobster (to eat). I usually pull up an eel or two every other day, and the last two weekends in a row, I've pulled up an octopus. I have no idea what kind they are. The first one was small - about 2" head and a 1 foot span. The second one had about a foot large head and it's span was over 6 feet. At least that's how it looked when it was running amok on my kayak in the darkness. It nearly kicked me out of my boat and into the ocean too.

I do dive once in a while so I could also look for eggs.

I am also awaiting my collection permits from the department of game and fish. I'm not sure of the legality of this, but perhaps we could help each other - Send you eggs or octopus, get $ or equipment for the classroom tank?

Just a thought.

-Paul

P.S. Of course the octopus were released back into the ocean.

Sounds like you've done your research!

There is a BOAT LOAD of info here!

What was the approximate water temp, wondering if that was a GPO you may have pulled up. They like colder water. Great to have you aboard.

Felix.
 
Hi Paul, welcome to TONMO!

If you go collecting like this with a tangible connection to the school, I'm sure you want to be completely legit. I can see the headline now:

"California man indicted--shipped native species across country, school profited"

It looks like I have an egg source for this season (knock on wood), but you might ask the fish and game people about it for the future. Unfortunately I think its the kind of thing they would say no to at first principles without reasoning it through. They're animals that aren't threatened and you'd never have to take more than 10% of any given mother's brood. I consider invasiveness a non-issue here because you wouldn't be sending things anywhere that Octopets wasn't. It wouldn't hurt to see what they say since you're dealing with them for permits anyway.

Dan
 
on that same note im also getting an international and foriegn waters collection permit from the us costoms department in order to bring back octos and corals from the bahamas for personal use. if i do manage to get this done ill be more than happy to send some eggs your way if i ever end up with them
 
bmatson said:
What is the difference between O. bimaculoides and O.bimaculatus? Is it size? I remember something about the false eyespots being different.

Ben

You can tell by the eyespots.

O. bimaculoides looks like chain links.

O. bimaculatus looks like a sunburst.

Otherwise they look the same, except O.bimaculatus gets twice as large.
 
DHyslop said:
Hi Paul, welcome to TONMO!

If you go collecting like this with a tangible connection to the school, I'm sure you want to be completely legit. I can see the headline now:

"California man indicted--shipped native species across country, school profited"


:shock: :lol:

I'd like to avoid that!

Today while tidepooling with the girlfriend, I ran across another one.

DSC00295.jpg

About a two inch head...

th_DSC00298.jpg


DSC00297.jpg


-Paul
 
Blesum said:
:shock: :lol:

I'd like to avoid that!

Today while tidepooling with the girlfriend, I ran across another one.

DSC00295.jpg

About a two inch head...

th_DSC00298.jpg


DSC00297.jpg


-Paul

That's awesome Paul. I held a 1-inch baby over the weekend (Saturday) at Bird Rock. He was SOOO cute. It took every fiber of my being not to bring him home and setup a new tank. He was literally half the size of your pinky finger. I gave him a nearby hermit crab and he pounced on it. I love how they look just like miniature adults, even as babies...
 
i need cuttle said:
thats funny, i just started working at a lfs, and we have bluerings, "brown". and "bali" octo's on our list

this isnt exactly helpful unless you know the source. There are thousands of vendors. What list were you viewing?




Paul like I said earlier in this post, I own an LFS. Id happily trade some product to get you going for a small octo.

Feel free to PM me if your interested.
 

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