My bimac egg hatching timeline

[jbardwel]

Aug 9, 2022 obtained female bimac that was born mid may to early April 2022
Sadly, (or so I thought) she stopped feeding Nov 18th and will not come out of her den for food, or any reason
My thought was that she is already in the programed death spiral.
Nov 28th 2022 Spotted eggs
Feb 1, 2023 First baby hatched
Feb 1, 2023 ordered 1000 day 7 live Mysis shrimp from Marinco Bioassay labs at ~$200 including shipping
half of the Mysis are living, growing and hovering over rocks in my 72 gal dual Tunze 9012 skimmed/ GFO/Carbon octopus tank, but the other half of the mysis pretty promptly died in my 16 gal under gravel filtered “mysis breeding tank”. I guess there is a reason they are used as indicators of water quality. I am hopeful the baby bimacs will do OK on enriched near adult live brine shrimp, which are so so much cheaper from the LFS.
This post I found here online https://tonmo.com/threads/what-are-you-feeding-your-octopus.3700/page-14#post-134501 makes me hopeful

Feb 8 Two babies spotted, one much bigger than the other, spotted eggs again and they look ready to pop, plan is to shift over to enriched adult live brine,

I think I will just leave them all in the 72 gal tank that has tons of live rock and is well skimmed, feed them heavily and watch Darwin in action, might pull them out and rig up some 16 gal High tanks with undergravel filters and a bunch of dividers, but my office is already kind of full of tanks (see below)

 

[Tomh]

Good luck! That’s cool!

 

[tonmo]

Wow, great vid and pics! Very interested in this project

 

[pkilian]

Looks great! Keep an eye out because your babies will likely try and cannibalize each other if co-housed for extended duration. If you are very dedicated and want to achieve maximum survivorship you could separate each one into their own little PVC den. Here is a paper published from MBL that showcases a successful culture strategy for many small octopus: The Lesser Pacific Striped Octopus, Octopus chierchiae: An Emerging Laboratory Model (authored by TONMO member @agrearson )

By using this strategy you can also feed your animals cut up pieces of grass shrimp instead of live mysis which might bring your budget down a bit.

Either way you go, it's exciting to have babies and I'm interested to see more updates as this progresses!

 

[jbardwel]

Looks great! Keep an eye out because your babies will likely try and cannibalize each other if co-housed for extended duration. If you are very dedicated and want to achieve maximum survivorship you could separate each one into their own little PVC den. Here is a paper published from MBL that showcases a successful culture strategy for many small octopus: The Lesser Pacific Striped Octopus, Octopus chierchiae: An Emerging Laboratory Model (authored by TONMO member @agrearson )

By using this strategy you can also feed your animals cut up pieces of grass shrimp instead of live mysis which might bring your budget down a bit.

Either way you go, it's exciting to have babies and I'm interested to see more updates as this progresses!

Thanks for the advice and yes that is an interesting paper, I could try separating the babies, but I am really not sure what I would do with a whole bunch surviving. It sounds like if all goes well a handful if well fed will co-exist and that would be ideal for me. I do it for my own amusement and also to show the public that comes to our natural history museum here at the University of Michigan University of Michigan Museum of Natural History - Ann Arbor, MI

 

[jbardwel]

more babies spotted clinging to glass, lots of empty flat egg cases floating around

 

[pkilian]

Cool! Can you share what temperature you keep your animal at? It would be good to know because it has a large impact on the development timeline on the eggs.

 

[jbardwel]

The babies are growing fast at the tank temperature of 64F, I am really not sure what they are eating. The mysis don't seem to be going away, but are instead growing on the abundant newly hatched brine that I have supplied each day with the intention of feeding the mysis. I suspect the baby octopi are eating the baby brine shrimp too. There is also a lot of live rock in the 72 gal tank which has been set up about 2.5 years, with lots of tiny snails on it, this might be what the octopi are eating. I never see more than 5 babies at a time, but I suspect it is like mice in your house, if you see one there are at least 10. The baby octopi are extremely good at hiding in little holes in the live rock. I tossed in a fair number of adult brine once as well, but they seem to die fairly quickly in the tank, in contrast to the mysis that just keep on growing. BTW to keep all these small creatures from getting sucked into my tunze 9012 skimmers, I zip tied a loose sheet of no-see-um mosquito netting to the bottom of the skimmer and one also around the return pump that runs the GFO/carbon reactor/chiller loop. I turned off the single tunze powerhead so the water is essentially still in the tank, but extremely well oxygenated from the two tunze 9012 in tank skimmers.

 

[jbardwel]

babies still growing strongly, but mom faded away and was unable to blow sand anymore so I removed her before she died and rotted the tank. Still a strong population of mysis shrimp growing well under the constant feeding with baby brine. Baby octopi seem to not be fighting with each other, there are plenty of hiding places in all the live rock, so that and the abundant food might help. Maximal number of baby octopi seen at one time is 15, but likely many more in there. There seem to be about 50 empty egg cases

 

[pkilian]

Sounds cool! I would love some photos of the tank with babies if you are able.

 

[jbardwel]

Here's a few photos

 

[jbardwel]

A few more

 

[tonmo]

nice work @jbardwel, looking good!

 

[Joe-Ceph]

That’s very cool. How are they doing now?

 

[jbardwel]

I think fine. They have gotten so good at hiding I can stare at a rock for ten minutes finally see an octopus,reach for a sharpie to mark the spot on the glass and spend another 5 minutes relocating it at the same position, they are kind of like little sections of the rock that move slightly with each breath, they are about the size of a finger digit now. Invested in anther batch of live Mysis but they don't seem to be depleting it fast. Might just be growing on all the stuff growing on the live rock like tony snails