Long time Lurker coming out of her den.

Joined
Apr 17, 2010
Messages
7
Hi Gang!

I'd like to introduce myself and my little piggy Inklet. My name is Roxy and I have been a lurker on TONMO for well over a year. I want to thank you all for all of the awesome information you post on this site. Without it I would never have attempted to raise a baby octopus. It has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.

Inklet is a bimac octopus that was born at Boston University in Jan/Feb 2011. I believe there are other members who obtained baby bimacs from the same source. Two babies were given to a lfs I frequent and that's where I found her! I was so surprised that they had two baby bimacs! They told me she was already taken, but I showed such an interest and already had a tank set up that they ended up selling her to me! She was four months old when I brought her home. (The other bimac was being kept by the store) For the first six weeks she lived in a two gallon critter keeper and then one day she let me know she was ready for her big tank and off she went into the thirty gallon I had for her. Within a few months I moved her into a fifty five gallon Fort Octo-Knox. She has a chiller too. She is now almost ten months old. Arm tip to arm tip she is twenty-six inches and has a mantle of five and a half inches. (FYI I have no idea if she is really female. I just picked a sex and stuck with it =)

Here are some pics of her.
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Nine months old.

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Six months old.

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Four months old. The day I brought her home.

I have to say overall though that she is an absolute terror! LOL! An adorable and completely loved terror!

I feed her as often as she wants. When she was little I taught her to come to the top of the tank to "ask" for a crab. She caught on very quickly and sometimes "asks" for three crabs a day. I had decided before I got an octo that I was only going to feed live foods only for the enrichment and feed her as much as she wants. She is a pig!

I keep a boat in Maine and have access to Green Asian crabs and Green European crabs, both an invasive species that is killing baby lobsters and other types of native crabs. I spoke with the department of Maine natural resources and they let me know that they were quite happy that I was collecting them. Every once in awhile I give them stats on how many I've collect and from where. I also collect live mussels from the dock and buy live clams for her at the grocery store. When she was little I was also feeding her live baby shrimp, hermits, and snails. She's really only intrested in big stuff any more. I try to change it up as much as possible. She even ate an oyster the other night. If I can find any, I'm going to add a few dock minnows (baby herring) for her to play with and munch on.

When I moved to the Boston area a year ago, I decided to take some time off from corporate America and learn the area, so I am an at home full time Octo-Mom! We interact all day. She is in the kitchen near the back door, which is used as the main thourgh fare and she watches the goings on all day. She is really a people watcher, not interested in the least with toys. I've tried some many different items and she could care less. She is totally obsessed with the cat though. Stalks the cat all along the tank.

I have so many stories!

We went on vacation for a week and I had the lfs come in every other day to feed her and my other tanks, I have seven total. When I got back from my trip she showed her disapproval by squiring water into my face for five days straight. Thank goodness she got over that! She is such a character!

Thanks for listening to me ramble on about my Inky Stinky. =)

Roxy
 
I have a different species (in addition to a WC bimac male) that recently discovered squirting water out of the tank. I am not sure if it is disapproval or just something she thinks is clever. I tried to position my (adult) son so that she would anoint him appropriately but, not unlike his own son, Little Bit would not show off when she had an audience.
 
Thanks for your responses!

Inklet squirts water at me when she is upset or frustrated. She even goes as far as trying to pull my hand closer down to her face before she lets loose. She was squirting so much water out of the tank at one point that it was messing with her salinity. I'm utterly surprised to learn that Octopus have similar feelings of anger and frustrated and she let me know.


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