Newbie with octopus and eggs

[TidePool Geek]

Hi Tim,

The consensus seems to be that you've either got O. rubescens or O. digueti. I'm not knowledgeable enough to speculate but here are a couple of picture galleries that might help you:

This one is O. rubescens
http://www.cephbase.utmb.edu/imgdb/...D=&CephID=582&Location=&Keywords=&LowestTaxa=

And this is O. digueti
http://www.cephbase.utmb.edu/imgdb/...D=&CephID=522&Location=&Keywords=&LowestTaxa=

These galleries include pictures of both the animals and of their developing eggs.

FWIW: Your pictures do appear to be of a male octo. In the center picture in your original post (Octopus2.jpg) the arm that is pointing directly to the left seems to be different than the others - that's indicative of a male since they have one specialized arm for sperm transfer.

It's possible that the "spats" that you witnessed were actually the two octos mating. The fact that one is significantly larger than the other but that both survived the encounter reinforces that idea.

If you're not familiar with the octopus life cycle it might be worth pointing out that these two animals are almost certainly going to die soon. That's the natural way of things. Depending on species, an octopus grows to breeding size/age in 6 to 36 months (more or less) and dies after reproducing. You might want to warn your client!

BTW: Those were excellent pictures! I'm sure everyone wishes you the best of luck and hopes that you'll keep us informed about how things are going.

Reproductively yours,

Alex

 

[viciousfishes]

Thanks for the links, I'm pretty sure that we have O. digueti after comparing the pics. Are these the ones that are easier to raise to adulthood? Any tips? should the eggs, or babies, or parents be removed from the tank? We are all aware of the short life cycle but were just getting attached to these two and had hoped to know them a bit longer oh well such is life...

 

[Feelers]

Thanks for the links, I'm pretty sure that we have O. digueti after comparing the pics. Are these the ones that are easier to raise to adulthood?

That means your in luck!!!! These are so called big egg species - when the eggs hatch a "fully" formed mini octopus will pop out, and carry on just as normal.

Small egg species on the otherhand have planktonic larvae, making them pretty much impossible without very intense care- kinda like raising clownfish, but much harder.

Here's a link to Cephjedi's log on raising some eggs.... http://www.jimbolouislabs.com/eggjournal.htm

And here a good bit of info Dan found from the now closed octopets....

Octopet Egg Festoon

Octopus eggs are difficult, take a lot of time and care to hatch, and once hatched they require live feed. Octopus will not eat dead food until they are older and they do not survive on brine shrimp. I recommend that only the most serious and experienced marine hobbyist attempt to rear an octopus from the egg.

Now If the warning didn’t scare you off, let me tell you how to hatch and care for octopus eggs.

1. Water quality needs to be high, see Octopus info for water quality guidelines.

2. Attach egg festoon to a piece of Styrofoam with fishing line or rubber band, so eggs stay off the bottom and sides of tank.

3. IMPORTANT! KEEP EGGS CLEAN! Gentle aeration under or near eggs, so eggs move just enough to
rub against each other, this helps to keep the eggs clean. Gently rubbing the eggs between your fingers
everyday will also help keep the eggs clean. In nature, the female octopus spends all her time rubbing
every egg of her brood, between 400-700 eggs. She even stops eating and never leaves her
den. Dirty eggs lose the ability to transfer oxygen through the egg wall and will not hatch.

4. Water temperature effects hatch time; the warmer the faster they hatch.

5. The closer to hatching the smaller the yolk sac gets and you will be able to see the baby octopus through
the egg wall. Be very careful with aeration and rubbing eggs when the yolk sac is less than half the size
of the entire egg. When the yolk is the size of a BB (Copper BB gun ammo) or you get any eggs
hatching prematurely, you should stop handling the eggs, premature hatchlings tend not to survive.

6. LIVE FEED! Have your live feed ready for the day the octopus hatch, amphipods , mysids, copepods and
pretty much anything live and small enough for them to handle. Feed 2-3 pods/day/octopus, keep the
area the octopus live as small as possible and as shallow as possible, this helps them catch food because
the food has less space to escape. Always have live food in the octopus tank, so they won’t eat each
other!

7. OCTOPUS DENS, start with ½ inch pvc pipe pieces, always have more dens than you do octopus, so the
octopus don’t fight over them. As the octopus grow and fill their dens you need to put in larger and
larger pipe sizes. They prefer pipes with a cap on one end and half a cap on the other end.

8. The bigger the octopus gets the bigger the live feed, so this gives you more choices for feed. Small
clams, small crabs, snails, worms anything you think the octopus are big enough to catch, eat and won’t
be eaten themselves

It will be interesting to see how it goes

 

[cthulhu77]

They sure don't resemble digueti, and they are out of the natural range...of course, they could be transfers, or abnormals...hey, it does happen.
Adult digueti are about 8" in diameter, spread out...more miniature than miniature

 

[Feelers]

viciousfishes : can you see "two flaps below the eyes" on the octopus? This apparantly is one of the ways to distinguish between the two species.
I only just worked out where Santabarbara was, it does seem a wee bit out, but who knows.

 

[cthulhu77]

The only place I have been able to find them is in the northern straights of the Sea of Cortez...but, it is conceivable that they could make it, or be transferred to, S.B.
In the photos, they look waaaaay to big to be digueti, though...our adults can fit into a shot glass.

 

[viciousfishes]

These two are way to big to fit in a shot glass. I wasn't able to get a good look at them on Friday when I serviced the tank, but I did find that she has a lot more eggs attached up under the rocks in her cave. Probably 100-200 eggs and the eggs are about the size of a grain of rice if that helps with ID'ing. The digueti pics resemble these two the most from what I have been able to see so far. Although they do sometimes have some red coloration in them. Also in looking at the pics of O. rubescens I saw that some of the pictures were taken at the Channel Islands which is basically where these two came from. So maybe that points more in the direction of these being O. rubescens. In that case, do they still hatch out to be full baby octopuses? That would eat copepods and amphipods etc.?

 

[Feelers]

Sounds like O rubescens from the egg size, when they hatch you might want to switch/slow down the flow or they'll get skimmed!

To confirm have a look at these pics...

The middle egg is O. digueti, and the bottom egg is what O. rubescens eggs would be like. Unfortunately - there isnt a scale on the pic.


here is a pic of rubescens eggs.

 

[viciousfishes]

Well,

here is a pic of rubescens eggs.
These look like the eggs we have.... so now what?

Tim

 

[Nancy]

Here are some O. rubescens pics from the NRCC