New octo in tank. Please help me ID it.

Davinci

Cuttlefish
Registered
Joined
Aug 18, 2010
Messages
18
Hello everyone. I just bought a new octo. This one is very small. I was not able to take any pictures since it is always hiding under the rocks. But let me try to describe here meanwhile I try to take its pic.

Description:

Nocturnal.
Reddish or brownish color.
Local fish store said it was a pygmy species.
Tank temperature around 78 degrees.
I live in Florida but I have no Idea were the octo came from.

Many thanks in advance.
 
Yeah I looked at some pics. It kinda looks like it. Except mine really looks like a Giant Pacific Octopus as far as the color of it goes. It is just a baby, very very small. Maybe the color changes once it grows a bit more?????? Not sure. How about O. Joubini is it possible?
 
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We have one person that is keeping a joubini right now, and I'm pretty sure D said the little one is fairly active, much more so than a Mercatoris. But the red/brown coloring is usually a merc.
 
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When at rest, mercs are white most of the time. They have a universal habit of curling their arms up over their mantle and peeking out between the arms (often one or two arms will curl up between the eyes), giving them a rather endearing cute look. Other octos will show this defense posture but mercs seem to take the postion most of their denning time. Where other octos will often show different color patches (yellow spots on a number of them), I have not seen anything other than brown or reddish-brown and white on O. mercatoris. Here are a couple of pictures of two that I raised from hatchlings and here are some that are typical. One thing to look at when you can see it out is the length of the arms compared to the mantle length (sack behind the eyes measured from behind the eyes to the end). A merc has relatively short arms that will be about two times the mantle length.
 
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