O. Briareus (Nikto)

Joined
Sep 27, 2010
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My octo arrived this morning via fedex (from Tom) and although he was missing part of a limb he looked healthy. After acclimating him for about an hour and a half I put him in the tank and he immediately went into the rocks and started looking around. At this point he's blown pretty much all of the sand out from underneath the rocks, seems fairly active. I'll attach some pictures though most at this point are from the bucket I was using to acclimate him(her? haven't gotten that good a look at the tentacles yet). I've also thrown my rovio's live feed up at nicotinelounge dot com if you're interested in a grainy feed from the side of my aquarium :smile:
Also, here is a quick video I took while acclimating:
 
Photos

Here are some photos:
 

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:welcome: to Tonmo!

I got one from Tom today also, there are four of us. Mine didn't make it. The box wasn't insulated and the heater was spent. I think the octopus just got too darn cold. I checked the SG and that was high also, did you check yours? I am going to check out your live feed, great idea. Good luck, I hope yours makes it, keeping my :fingerscrossed: for you!
 
Wow, :tentacle: the live feed! I don't think it's very grainy. Watch the fish, are those damsels? I had 2 living with my O. vulgaris, they were fine for a few months than they started biting his arms. I had to remove the little devils. And to think I was worried the fish were the ones in damger.

Yours looks very active, mine barley moved. It looks pretty good.
 
I'm really sorry to hear that, I'm sure Tom will feel bad as well. The heater in mine was still a bit warm but I did receive it fairly early (10AM EST). The SG was a bit low but I didn't check it until I had already started acclimating so it may have been even lower. There was quite a bit of waste in the bag so I started acclimating as quickly as possible. I guess shipping in the cold is a bit risky, I once received a few jellyfish that were well below optimal temperature and while they did eventually came back from it they were in pretty bad shape for about a week.
 
Yeah there are four fish, a bunch of little hermits, some snails, a few emerald crabs, a pencil urchin, and a brittle star. I hadn't even considered the fish posing a problem to the octopus, I will definitely keep an eye on them. I'm planning on getting a real rig with an hd camera on there soon, my mini-atx computer I'm planning on using for it is missing it's power supply at the moment so I figured the rovio would do well enough - at least now I can watch from work :smile:
 
Your SG was low? Mine was 1.030 1/2 hour into acclimation. My tank is 1.025 and I check it frequently. I had to recalibrate my refractometer but it was correct. I acclimated for over 3 hours to slowly bring it down. I just don't know if there was anything else I could have done. I feel horrible. My poor little octopus looked really sad too, it only had 4 arms, I wish I could have saved it.
I am getting another one Thursday. I requested insulation and an extra heater.
 
I've kept mine at 1.026 and when I measured the bucket it was between 1.024 and 1.025. I haven't seen the fish nip at him yet but I'll definitely move them if they do, my biorb is pretty empty anyway. Hope you have more luck with the next one. I'm sure there wasn't anything you could do at that point, sometimes we're just unlucky (and so are they).
 
In the tank

Here's a picture of Nikto underneath the large rock where he cleared out all of the sand. Tried to give him a scallop but he just pushed it away and continued blowing sand away from his little hole.
 

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Both of my 6 month olds (O.briareus) den at the back of the tank and have removed the sand in favor of the glass. Here are two videos of KaySoh (videos 3 and 4 on the post) shoveling the sand away from one place and putting it in another.

So far I have found shell on shrimp is the easiest to be accepted as first dead food. Monty will only take food with shells (this is a first though). No matter what we offer he will take it if it has a shell and totally refuse it if it does not. I recommend using a feeding stick over trying to hand feed. Be aware that it is almost guaranteed it will try to capture the stick once it is accustomed to finding food at one end. Some people will play tug of war and others just wait until they are tired of holding it. If you play tug of war, note that it is likely to pull hard enough to dislodge the live rock (this goes for hands too). :biggrin2:
 
Thanks for the advice, I have some frozen shelled shrimp as well so I'll go ahead and defrost one and give it a go. It may also be that he's just plain not hungry (I assume) as there are plenty of crabs for him to snack on.
 
Let's hope he is just not hungry because he ate a crab and that she is not about to brood. I am never comfortable with a new octo until it has been in a tank for 2 weeks. If they make it into the third week then chances become pretty good that they will acclimate and live through until senescence (or until eggs hatch or would have hatched it they are not fertile). I have not had a crab survive more than 48 hours but if you have multiples, he may continue to hunt them until they are gone so watch for crab carcasses.
 

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