Octopus cyanea

[marinebio_guy]

Octopus cyanea that we collected last night.

 

[bluespotocto]

That guy is huge!

 

[monty]

very impressive animals!

 

[DWhatley]

How long will you keep them and will you give us more photos since we rarely get to see this species - Please?

 

[marinebio_guy]

Hopefully, I'll keep them until they die, which will hopefully be a while We are doing some experiments on diet/growth and if we get them to spawn try to do some larval rearing. The largest one is about 9 lbs and has an arm-span of about 4 feet. I'd like to try to do long term experiments focusing on larval rearing and artificial diets.

 

[DWhatley]

You'll post more frequently than usual then?

 

[Animal Mother]

Awesome. Please keep us updated!

 

[marinebio_guy]

Yes, I haven't been around lately because I've been building a marine mammal stranding facility and tuna aquaculture tank. Which is not as exciting as cephs

 

[DWhatley]

Welcome back to the fun stuff! The marine mammal stranding facility should have been interesting though.

It appears there was no problems with fighting in the small space of the cooler on the way back to the facility. Did you find these two close together? Will you house them separately?

 

[Damien]

nice specimen

 

[sorseress]

Please, sends lots of pictures. I don't know if you'll have time for lots of journaling, but I would thnk your experimemts with artificial diets would have a lot of interest here.

 

[marinebio_guy]

They have not seemed to be too aggressive with one another, but they are in a big tank 15ft in diameter. We are planning to put them into individual tanks for the experiments. There is not a lot of info on this species in captivity but from what I've read as long as you keep them at low densities and provide them with hiding places they can be kept together, but males can become more aggressive once mature.

 

[DWhatley]

Do you need a low paid tank cleaner (I would have to live in the facility though, can't afford rent)?

Neogondactylus has mentioned keeping this species in the lab but I don't think anyone has journaled one (at least not during my time here).

Anything you can give us on nutrition would be excellent as I have only found a small bit regarding feeding fish (two studies with different fish) vs crabs in my wanderings.

Are you going to name them? I find it most curious that this seems to split scientists even now. Jane Goodall was heavily chastized.

 

[marinebio_guy]

I generally do not name my animals, maybe because I care for thousands of animals and it's hard to remember their name's

The first project is for a marine science student for her senior thesis. We will be comparing growth between a shrimp diet (control) vs chicken and squid. As far as I know one one has gotten positive growth on just a fish diet. After this experiment is done I will try other protein sources and if I can find one that is cheep I can start working on producing an artificial diet. Although, my main interest currently is completing the life cycle.

We might try to see if we can measure stress/health in the animals. I don't know if it will work but the student wanted to try, so we will see what happens.

 

[DWhatley]

Please ask her to join us and that we would be interested in what she can share of her observations.