[Octopus]: Octonaut (species unknown)

[SkyFl]

Well, I got a new phone yesterday which has an unbelievable camera... and I happened to have a very social octopus last night - so we were able to get several clear photos of the spots.
When you are close to him, you can see the spots appear to be internal, almost sac-like. They are not external colorings.
Here are a few of the "better" pictures and you can see regardless of movement or color changes, the spots remain.
I also paid extra attention to arm size. When he is swimming with legs stretched behind, you can tell all his arms are the same size.

* On another note - still can't get him to eat fiddlers on a regular basis. He still prefers red legs & small snails. (and of course the magic stick that brings shrimp!)

 

[DWhatley]

It is always interesting (and confounding) to see what each octopus will eat. Fiddlers have been the one staple we recommend for small and newly acclimated because it almost always (until several recent animals) gets them eating in their new environment. Table shrimp, on the other hand, is a great food but usually takes awhile to get them to accept (we had one that would only take shrimp with the shell on). I still have several redlegs that have survived multiple octopuses and are on my primary clean up crew recommendation because they have seemed to been ignored. Snails are usually a last choice. IME, newly introduced animals will eat (or at least maul) hermits and snails but leave them alone after the "easy" food (shrimp and, for larger animals, crab claws) are regularly offered. HOWEVER, each animal has its own preference. There is some evidence that preference may be heavily influenced by what is most prevalent where they grew up (and one experiment found officinalis cuttlefish to have a preference for what it could see while still in the egg sack). It would be an interesting study to see if small egg species accept a higher variety of foods or more readily take dead food than the benthic born.

 

[Dools]

There has been one redleg hermit, 3 snails and one Queen conch in Kobe's tank from the beginning and he has yet to show any interest in eating any of them. He does love the red claw crab he gets once a week. The rest of the week he eats a piece of shrimp usually every other day. He too loves to play with the feeding stick. At least Octonaut is eating consistently SkyFl.

 

[DWhatley]

I think we are missing something about feeding sticks or stick like items placed in the aquarium. I think all octos that have learned to feed from a stick, insist on capturing it. I think it does have something to do with food delivery but an epiphany is needed to translate this common event. Neal will often feed by hand and, once the octopus is used to being hand fed, it will often want to play with his fingers after receiving the food. Sometimes the play comes before deciding to take the food at other times the food is held while tugging on the hand. It is different than when I physically interact without food. He has never been bitten.

 

[DWhatley]

@SkyFl, have a look at our newest journal. I think we have another "Octonaut"

 

[SkyFl]

Starting to get a little concerned. I haven't seen my buddy in two days. Thursday night, he only came out for a few minutes (while I was watching.) Then, Fri & Saturday nights I did not see him at all. I can see the black glass through his den, and usually, I cannot because he fills up the den, so it appears black.
Not sure how long I should wait before moving stuff. Its hard to be patient after several weeks of very predictable behavior. I will test water perimeters again tonight just to be sure, but they were fine as of yesterday.

 

[DWhatley]

Don't move anything for at least a week. Anytime -- regardless of last maintenance and tests -- that I see a behavior change, I test the salinity and do a water change. As hobbyists, we can only test for a bare minimum of water quality conditions. This action/reaction may be more to satisfy desire to do something that cannot be harmful than anything that will provide a problem correction (ie it doesn't hurt). Here is a prior discussion about disappearance but keep in mind this journal is for a very young animal where Octonaut is likely fully grown (you will have to read to another page to see the results of this search).

There are several possibilities. If Octonaut is female (I don't see signs that it curls its R3 arm but hard to be sure), she may be brooding. The door gathering is typical of a female about to brood (but also typical of creating a den for some species). However, the absence of her collection of doors would be unusual.

She may have moved (temporarily or permanently) her den. This is not uncommon, especially if she is about to brood. Look for another pile of shells. You can also move her door shells and any other bits of small rock to a pile in the center front of the tank and see if it disappears.

She may be up inside a crevice in a rock. Many animals that "disappear" have done this and keepers have gone to the extreme and disassembled the tank just to find the animal up inside a rock. Should you not heed my suggestion be sure to keep all rocks you move in the water.

On occasion, they are never found. You can monitor your water quality to look for a spike in ammonia but, with a well established tank, small animals and/or a good clean-up crew fouling often does not show.

 

[SkyFl]

Still no sightings...

 

[SkyFl]

Water parameters still solid, and did two small water changes. Still no signs. Going to wait until Thursday to move the roof of the den - although I am confident Octonaut is not in there as I can see all the way through. All live food is still accounted for. Have not noticed any new shell/rock movements. Even piled up all loose shells in one location, and they are all un-touched. Thinking the worst.

 

[DWhatley]

The worst can be two things. One (the most common) is that Octonaut is female and has laid eggs. Since we don't know the species it is hard to predict if the hatchlings (these would likely be fertile) will be benthic or pelagic. Since you can't see her and the eggs, my guess would be pelagic (small egg) and there is no hope of raising any. Most of the small egg species hatch earlier than the larger and hatchlings would appear in roughly 2 weeks from the time she disappeared. Larger eggs of home aquarium sized octopuses tend to hatch (based upon very limited observations) after several month (6-10 weeks). We have no recorded successes of any species of small egged animals surviving (max 21 days, most common 2 days). Both types tend to hatch in one major batch with a few additional animals over a 2-10 day period. The benthic hatchlings look much like a white, unfed tick , that will swim to the outer walls at hatching. Pelagic hatchlings look like tiny pumping dots in the water column.

The second, is, obviously, that Octonaut expired. We do see some that just vanish and die without warning but this is less common than witnessing a slow decline (more obvious with larger species).

Since your water parameters are good, I am inclined to guess #1 so if you start looking, be very careful with your rock rearrangement and keep in mind that she may have moved her den, including burying underneath the rock.

 

[QueenB]

Fingers crossed that he just found a new den. I've been lucky that Wink has made a den in a smaller piece of LR that sits on the top of the rock formation and has stayed there. She hasn't bothered to move down the LR at all. But once she does move or when she passes and another Octopus comes to inhabit the tank, there are tons of hiding places for them to disappear.

Wonderful journal and photos are amazing BTW. Hard to photo in the red lights but my iPhone 4 does better pictures then my newer iPad 4. I find it odd as the iPad 4 is much newer and supposed to have a better camera. (shrugs) I also try with my Olympus and the photos can be very hard to take. I just keep trying and sometimes I get lucky.

 

[DWhatley]

Interestingly similar NatGeo intro (stop video aat 39-43 sec to have a look, can't seem to add parms to the autolink)

 

[SkyFl]

After waiting a full week, tonight I started moving one piece of rock at a time to a pile in the corner of the tank looking for my bud.
We found her. She is a she and is brooding. She has herself wedge in a small hole. I saw no eggs - So I am assuming she is on top of them, although as soon as I saw her, and ensured she was still alive, I placed the rock back quickly - so I could have missed the tiny eggs, I suppose.

I guess my question now is: now what? I have read many-a-journal with brooding and am unsure of how I should proceed. Should I wait another week and check again?
I am sad that the time I had with her was so short , but I learned a lot from her and am looking forward to more cephs and hopefully one we will have more time with.

 

[DWhatley]

Now we have a waiting game. Most females won't eat but if you have a clean-up crew, you might squirt small pieces of food close to her den. What you don't want to do is foul the water and there is not much you can do for her. Even if she will eat a little, she won't survive much beyond the hatch date (even if the eggs are infertile). There is a high chance she will have mated and all known species store the sperm and fertilize the eggs when they lay them (there is like a better term for this as they are not chickens ).

Since we are unsure of species we don't know if the hatchlings will be benthic and fully formed (roughly 2 months incubation in eggs) or pelagic and need to exist in the water column for a month (roughly 2 to 4 weeks incubation in eggs then another month transforming in the water column). The benthic born have a slight chance of survival. The best successes we have had have been with O. bimaculoides and O. mercatoris (there is still a slight chance that is what Octonaut is but her coloring and arm length suggest not). I am not aware of any pelagic hatchlings that have been raised through a normal lifespan by hobbyists. I have read of a few public aquariums having a few O. vulgaris survive 4 months (from somewhere around 40,00 initial hatchlings) and another Alaskan animal at least until the benthic stage by feeding it crab zoe. Here is a link to a list of papers I have manage to find on rearing young.

 

[SkyFl]

My husband had a kind of interesting thought. We live just a few minutes from the coast. Would it benefit her/the eggs to take the rock she is on (along with the one underneath) and release her? I am told she came from our local area, and we have only had her 2 months. Would it give the eggs a better chance at survival if I can release them to deep enough water? I am not sure we are truly viewing this as a solution, but at least something that merits discussion.