OhToo is not going to recover. He has lost control of his balance and is dying. I found him on the bottom substrate this AM with his bad eye in the sand. I picked him up to put him in a basket (to keep the clean-up crew away until he expires) and had a memorable, somewhat frightening experience.
He latched onto my hand and would not come off. He refused to attach to anything else and then started biting me. We had quite a go of it and I finally scraped him of onto the lid but he would not let go of that either and just hung at the top. When I tried to get him back into the water (he was partially in and all arms out), he would go after my hand again.
I learned that a plastic turkey baster makes a good octo handling tool when they start being impossible. He wanted to attach to something soft and the plastic tube and bulb worked well (with difficulty and much paniced patience).
He stayed suspended at the top of the tank, in the water, holding the floating basters (I put two in the tank for him) for a good part of the day but eventually tired, and kind of dropped into the crossover tube. Unfortunately, he could not hold on there and literaly fell mantle first to the bottom like a ball without any kind of control. I offered the turkey baster again and he accepted the lift. This time I put a breeder net under him and he did not fight the soft material like he did the hard plastic breeder I first tried (the net one was not assembled when I found him). Anytime I put my hand near the net he tries to latch on (my brittle star wanted to check out the net because there was food - OhToo did seem to want to eat - available. I picked, Pesky up and moved her but OhToo tried to keep my hand in his grasp again).
I have a soft plastic, open sphere (geodesic dome looking toy) that I put in the tank with him and he has stayed wrapped around it. He has had his arms inside his webbing most of the day and I am afraid he may start eating them but so far, the ends are still attached and I think he has eaten some food (he will grab anything offered but I know some of it has not been eaten).
His other eye is now also swollen and I don't expect him to live until morning. He keeps hanging in there but I am afraid the eye infection is just symptomatic of the senescence I have been trying to ignore for the last two weeks.
The bites, but the way, look like flea bites, with only surface skin scratched. I did wash and put antibiotic cream on them several times since he has an obvious infection but I was only barely aware he was biting me. Soooo different from his healthy, very gentle behavior

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