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Little Sucker

S

stradjm

Cuttlefish
Registered
Joined
Jun 11, 2005
Messages
17
This thread is for my new octopus (O. Aculeatus?). How I got him is here:

Octo in Bay Area needs home

I didn't see him all day today. Then, when I was surfing the internet tonight I looked up and there he was, on the side of tank staring at me. I watched him for a bit before he seemed to get startled and swim away. He didn't just swim, though---he made his arms go stiff and wrinkled so they looked like algae; he held this pose and floated around for a bit, then went smooth and hid under a rock. Perhaps more evidence that he is indeed an Aculeatus?

Will post some pics once he's more comfortable with light.
 
Neat name, sounds like a really fun octopus too ! Now, if you could get him to type...

greg
 
Update, some pics

Little Sucker has become much more active in just a few days. He's not that active during the day, but has been coming out twice in the evening: once while his light is on for ~ 1 hour, then back into his den, and finally he peeks out for a bit in the dark. He loves to crawl on the tank walls and doesn't jet around much. He's made his den near the inlet for the filter and likes to swim around it and poke it.

I have posted a couple of pictures below. He is missing an arm (a septapus!) and one of the existing seven is a bit shorter than the others, so maybe it was lost at some point too. The missing arm is probably more evidence that he is an Aculeatus, but I'd be happy to hear other opinions.

I have seen some crab legs near his den so he's definitely eating some hermit crab. I'm going to go down to the wharf tomorrow and get some other things for variety...also I want to help along the bonding by being the provider of food.

sucker1.jpg


sucker2.jpg
 
He's really cute and deffinately has that long arm look. I think possably a female cause any octopus I have had that was missing limbs/injuries turned out to be a female.

Carol
 
Nice looking octopus there, My first aculeatus was also a septopus, although the arms will grow back in time.

:)
 
Day Five

He (she?) spends a lot of his time out near the glass so I will try to have a go at sexing by looking for the hectocotylus soon. While he does seem to have some interest in looking at me, especially when it is dark in the room, he really seems to love looking at his reflection in the walls or the water surface (occasionally poking it!). He spent some time tonight shooting himself backward with his siphon, even crashing into the aquarium walls a few times, with no apparent ill effects. The frequency and magnitude of the color changes are also increasing, from a white with blue markings to a rather dark brown.

He seemed a bit too skittish still to take food straight from me, so I left a crab in the tank for him to eat at his leisure. Since I live so close to the ocean I'm going to at least have a go at feeding him all live food.

His mantle is about 3 cm long, from tip to the middle of his eyes.
 
I have a question about feeding. Little Sucker has eaten, as far as I can tell, most or all of the hermit crabs that were in the tank when I got him. But I bought a couple of fiddler crabs and tried to feed them to him (on two separate days) and he didn't eat them; he just killed them and left the bodies in the tank (I removed them after a day).

I can continue doing hermits, but I wonder whether anyone else has had a similar experience with crabs being killed but not eaten.
 
How is your water quality? He could just be full of hermits. I would continue to offer, but make sure your water is good. Sometimes they go off feed and it's due to water issues.

Carol
 

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