Need some questions answered about my O. chierchiae (originally mercatoris)

[monty]

fishman42101.

Regarding the toxicity or not, it seems like Octopus chierchiae has been studied a fair bit, although not so much recently (the most cited papers seem to be from 1889 and 1964) and I didn't see any reports of toxic reactions, but it's always good to be careful, particularly, as Colin says, when the animal seems to be colorful or distinctive. It's probably a useful (although perhaps not so advisable in retrospect) that you've been bitten without any ill effects, although there's a thread around somewhere that has some discussion and pics of DHyslop's bimac, who had bit him previously with no problems, "deciding"(?) on one bite to inject enough (nonlethal) venom to make his hand swell up worse than a bee sting. Roy also pointed out that aquarium or sea water can harbor bacteria that doctors don't know how to treat, so he recommends not letting anything in your tank break your skin ever as a precaution, even without venom. (But, to be fair, there are also a lot of people who are willing to take the calculated risk and play with their octos, which I think is not really insane unless it's a blue-ring, although any bite should probably be flushed with peroxide or something as soon as possible.)

 

[Colin]

Damn! I was counting on you!

And, this points out an even worse aspect of the marine ornamental industry - substitutions. An octo is an octo yeah? Many exporters would rather send something that people don't want instead of nothing. Grrr!

Yeah and its even worse than that!!!

As a substitute I got 28, YES TWENTY EIGHT, H. lunulata sent to me of which only one survived more than 5 days... a very good example of how exporters operate and a very good example of why blue rings should not be exported! Poor buggers!

 

[monty]

!! good heavens, I hope (but doubt) that they never do that to people who don't know that they're dangerous. A substitution of mercatoris for vulgaris is annoying, in the other direction it leads to octos outgrowing their tanks, but sending a toxic animal (let alone 28 of them) in place of a harmless one is crazy irresponsible. "We were out of corn snakes, so we sent you 28 cobras instead" would seem irresponsible to any sane person, I would think.

And of course, I also feel terrible for the poor octos.

 

[dreadhead]

That does sound rather irresponsible.Did they come with any warning,or did they just hope you knew what they were?

 

[Animal Mother]

Yeah and its even worse than that!!!

As a substitute I got 28, YES TWENTY EIGHT, H. lunulata sent to me of which only one survived more than 5 days... a very good example of how exporters operate and a very good example of why blue rings should not be exported! Poor buggers!

That's ridiculous.

 

[monty]

Since there's some controversy about the wild population levels of this octo, I've moved this thread into the "Exotics" forum, leaving a permanent redirect from the original location-- if we think it's very important, we can expire that, but I wanted to make sure Jon at least continues to be able to get help to take care of his octo, too. I think it makes sense to move the other older thread on this species into exotics, too, so I'm going to do that next. (I hope I'm not being too proactive on this, but it looks like Tony and Nancy aren't online at the moment, so I'm just doing it...)

 

[shipposhack]

Yeah and its even worse than that!!!

As a substitute I got 28, YES TWENTY EIGHT, H. lunulata sent to me of which only one survived more than 5 days... a very good example of how exporters operate and a very good example of why blue rings should not be exported! Poor buggers!

LOL.

It is sad for the little guys though. I hope you end up getting some eventually.

 

[DWhatley]

What adds to the confusion pot is, as I understand it, chierchiae inhabits areas around Panama and Mexico and the H. lunulata come solely from Australia

Using your experience and one Debbie (Mote) related during TONMOCON II, it almost appears that the blue rings get shipped and then someone realizes what they are and just dumps the entire shipment on the first order for an octopus. If I remember it correctly, Debbie inherited 20ish H. lunulata from a pet store that had received but not ordered them and called her for help. She had to euthanized them (the agreement on accepting them at all) because there was not a proper facility for keeping a poisonous octo.

 

[shipposhack]

Maybe the suppliers know that O. Chierchiae is a sought after species and put it on the order list to find somewhere that has the facility to house an octopus and then ships out the blue rings. Shame on them!

 

[DWhatley]

Here is a paper that talks a little reproduction in O. chierchiae

http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~jevers/data/palbio3/04.pdf

 

[gholland]

Is there a possibility that this little guy really did come from the Gulf and is actually O. zonatus instead of O. chierchiae? Cephbase is down... What are the distinguishing characteristics of these two species (other than location of course).

 

[Neogonodactylus]

Possible. If I remember correctly, O. zonatus was from Columbia. They look almost identical.

Roy

 

[fishkid6692]

are o. zonatus more available?

 

[gholland]

O. zonatus supposedly range along the Caribbean side of Panama, Colombia, and Venezuela.
ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/009/y4160e/y4160e14.pdf

 

[Neogonodactylus]

I certainly never found one on the Atlantic Coast of Panama, but we rarely collected that deep. I do have to learn how to spell Colombia!

Roy