Ollie - New O. briareus

Oh my god! I did a water change today. Ollie was out as usual. He was a very nice blue color then as usual would turn dark, then back to light blue. He stayed out after I was done which is not what he normally does. I just walked by his tank and he is in the back corrner. I annot detect breathing. I am so scared, his color is actually good, but he is not moving. I fear the worst.
I don't think I've ever seen his eye so wide open :sad:
I am going to touch him to see if he moves .
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I had to remove him immediately, the crabs were eating one of his arms. You can see one tip is missing. He looks beautiful, I can't believe he is dead. He was grabbing me as I was cleaning his tank just a little while ago, I am heartbroken, this is so out of the blue.
His final photos.
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We have had a few instant deaths (of no particular species) that have never been explained. I have not seen any die with that much color or any skin texture (the wide open eyes are normal). Did you by chance also just loose an urchin (note the spines around where you found him)? I know there is a sensative place just behind the eyes (fishermen kill them by pinching it) and that their esophagus runs through their brain (brain is doughnut shapped) and it may be possible for them to eat something that gets stuck in their throat so to speak that will kill them (one of the science articles I read mentioned finding pieces of crab shell enmbedd in the brain).
 
I do have an urchin but it is still alive and fine. He looked perfect (except for the one leg tip the crabs were eating) even his color was the same as when he was alive. I am still shocked, he seemed perfectly normal just before, he kept grabbing me as I cleaned his tank. If I had seen some signs before hand but this was so unexpected :confused:
My husband wants to try and preserve him so we put him in a ziplock and into the freezer. Hated to do it but would be cool if he retains his color wouldn't it?
 
He might retain color. During TONMOCON II one of the speakers discussed preserving some blue rings that she had to euthanize (a pet store received an unordered bunch and wanted nothing to do with them so Mote accepted them with the understanding that they would be euthanized). She found that nicotine would aggravate them enough to keep color at death and it stayed during the preservation process. The color was not of a live animal but nothing like the dull grey we normally see. I was going to try nicotine after death to see if it would stimulate the still living tissues but forgot (I now smoke electronic cigs part of the time so I have it in liquid form to try next time). KaySoh had some color when she died but did not retain any in the formalin. Preservation is easy enough and is long term if you replace tissue - see Legs' thread for my method (coached by several of our scientific members). Just don't decide to keep him in the freezer as a long term preservation. Carol did this for many years and tells about what happened when the freezer died with 20 or so long expired octos ... Preserving with formalin and then alcohol (much safer - for humans - solution for long term storage) is by far the better way to perserve.
 

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