• Looking to buy a cephalopod? Check out Tomh's Cephs Forum, and this post in particular shares important info about our policies as it relates to responsible ceph-keeping.

Octopus Availability

Joe,
If you are thinking of the NRCC (that WAS the major educational supplier for cephs in general, both WC and, where viable, CB), they lost funding last year and are no longer a source. We are not aware of another institute that raises bimacs (there are others for a few cephs, the other that I have seen recently only offers joubini and I am not sure if it is joubini or mercatoris and they are WC). The belief (and that would need official clarification) that an individual can sell offspring that are tank raised so if you are of a mind to looking into a project or just happen to catch a fertile female there is a small market niche the needs filling
:gigas:
 
Thank you for the info. I think I will adjust the thermostat so to speak to a briareus. They seem to be the next logical choice. They seem to be readily available. Any suggestions on other species that are social.
 
If and when you can find them O. hummelincki have been noteably social and are a diurnal animal. However, the females seem less interactive and have a tendancy to start brooding very quickly (in as little as two weeks) after entering an aquarium (these are a small egg species so there is currently no hope of raising young). There is currently one male, Pen (AKA Penelope, CaptFish), that is fiesty that we don't quite know what to make of since this has been atypical but is one of my favorite vicarious animals.

Watch for posts on this thread (you can monitor it by having the first new post sent to your email if you subscribe to it) as members are good about posting on-line as well as occassional local availability. I have asked Kara (sealifeinc) to let me post a notice if she comes across any smaller animals that are not already spoken for but it is rare for her to collect them (with growing interest, however, she does look while collecting). You can monitor Tom's availibilty directly on his site but you need the tank up, running and at least 3 months cycled which will be good timing for the next crab season (when they are most commonly available as bi-catch from this industry).
 
Excellent! The waiting game begins so monitor the posts, continue to feed (overfeed) the tank to build up bacteria, and put in a call to some of your LFSs if you have any reliable ones (I would recommend not ordering but having them let you know if one shows up so you can look at it). For briareus, watching Tom's site is likely to be your best source but you just never know when the first ones will start showing up and where. If you do order from Tom be sure to specify that you want a golf ball sized mantle. He has learned to choose smaller ones but it still helps to specify and it never hurts to send him an email. He used to keep a waiting list but I think he has stopped the practice officially. He will sometimes still unofficially email someone if he gets several at one time.
 
I spoke with a gemtlman today. He seemed to be nice and helpful. Tom seems to be great, but he said it would be another two months before he had anything.
 
Without guinea pigs where would we be. lol. I pride myself on being somewhat patient, however at this point patience is giving way to desire. I am going to give it another two weeks and if I don't find one by then I will be the guinea pig. I really appreciate and enjoy TONMO forums. Thank you all for the quick responses. This site is much different than the culture of the wet web media site. WWM is not a very friendly site.
 
When new members notice this, I try to give cudos where they belong. Tony (TONMO) is rather strict with the rules. Unlike other sites though, the rules are to encourage discussion, interaction and new members to help everyone learn about cephalopods through sharing information and experiences. This is not limited to keeping cephs (and was not the original intent of the site - we just kind of pirate a lot of the space). Keep exploring and you will find excellent information about ceph fossils (and similar attitudes when new people try to id a found treasure), about discovering the deep water squid (with first hand reports from NZ and the biologists that examine them), ceph biology and ceph encounters in the wild (one of my favorite forums). The new blog section has two new topics that are going to continue to be interesting reading this summer about new ways to prepare fossils for publications and experiements on ceph pain.

Enjoy some reading while you pace :wink:
 
Well Tom responded to my email and let me know that it will probably be closer to December before he gets another O. briareus. Until then I guess the star of the tank will be a Brittle Starfish. Wooo hoooooo!
 
Really what food do you hand feed lol? I bought some of the food you suggested. The cyclop-eeze stuff. The one i bought brakes down to so small in water it almost disappears.
 

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