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OMG! Ossie gave birth

Thanks Sorceress and the rest of you who've posted. You guys are getting some inkling as to how much I have invested emotionally with these little ones. I'm seeing little octo babies everywhere! Went to dim sum the other day, saw a tea leaf floating, pointed at it as I asked W, "Guess what I saw." She just rolled her eyes at me :lol:

I've one marked out as my favorite. If that one goes... I'm going to be heartbroken. That's the one that does antics when I come near; it's been soooo active since I turned on the fan and put two fresh pods in.
 
I completely agree with Sorseress, you have done everything in your power short of giving blood for these little ones. You should have no guilt if some perish.
 
It is with a sad heart that I announce that all octo babies that are still with me have not survived.

Ossie is still alive, having outlived the brood that was kept here. We will be keeping a close eye one her for the rest of her lifespan.

Don't worry guys, I know I did the best with my little knowledge. I just wish I could've done more. It's just sad to watch these little guys so full of life the first few days weaken slowly over the next week and die.

At death, they are about 1/3 of the size they are when swimming about.

I don't think we will be getting an octopus until we have the larger tank set up and running. BTW, I now believe that all those "bad" events that prevented us from setting up a larger tank, was the universe's way of giving us a shot at raising Ossie's offspring.

Hopefully, Paradox and the UC Berkeley labs managed to keep a few alive.

Sorry Righty. I tried.
 
Sorry about the loss of the babies, but you know how difficult it is to raise them. It's even more the case because Ossie's babies are not as large as the hatchlings from bimacs or briareus.

It's sad, though, when they don't survive, despite your best efforts.

Nancy
 
I'm sorry to hear about the little ones, too. I don't know that it's any immediate consolation, but in the long term, the record of your experience may make it a bit more likely that others will be able to raise their octo-babies in the future. Raising these animals is known to be challenging or harder for experts, so I think you did a great job. And as much as I like to anthropomorphize cephs because of their intelligence and personalities, their reproductive strategy is more in the "have lots of offspring, and expect that most of them won't survive" than the human style "all your eggs in one basket" approach.

There are so many variables to consider... maybe the babies have different water quality or trace mineral requirements than adults, or maybe they need some nutrition that has to come from a mixed diet or something.

Reading back, although there's some evidence of octopuses learning by watching others, at least in cuttlefish there is also evidence that the learning center of the brain develops quite a while after hatching, so baby cuttles are "on auto pilot" for the first part of their lives until the brain grows a bit, and then they start learning a bit later. This was in Hanlon & Messenger, and involved that baby S. officianalis wouldn't learn to give up attacking shrimps in glass tubes, but the adults would try a few times and learn. This seemed to be related to development of some brain lobe (the vertical lobe, I think, which is also a learning center in octos.) Which, I suppose, suggests that if mental skills scale directly with size in cephs, that giant and colossal squids might be really smart... I suspect, though, that it's mostly that tiny larvae have so little space and energy that they have to devote most of their early developmental resources to eating and growing, and don't get to thinking until later, where we go through that stage in utero... (didn't meant to hijack this thread with a science ramble, of course... I know I'm a bit weird in that a way I avoid getting too caught up in sad events is to look at them from the lens of abstract understanding, but I by no means mean to downplay the heart in favor of the head...)
 
I thought mine laid eggs too

I thought mine laid eggs as she was not eating very much and suddenly got weaker like yours.

I was told she probably laid eggs and would eat less and die soon and she is getting weaker and eating less. I have read this before and accepted it as correct.

You're saying your eggs are actually floating?? Her den is very dark and I'm trying to leave her alone so I have yet to see the eggs. Hmmmm. I wish I was at home so I could look. Do they float immeadiately????

Please let me know so I can further troubleshoot this! :confused:

Fishy1:sink:
 
Fishy, I never saw Ossie's eggs. Just woke up one day to babies in the tank. But then apparently, Ossie is/was a small-egged species so maybe I saw them and didn't realize what they were.

Nancy, Cuttlegirl, Sorceress & Monte, thanks for your words. And yeah, Monte, I tend to over-analyze stuff and push the emotional away. As soon as I realized there was very little hope for them, I started to do that and just went over all my water changes etc. to figure out what I could do better for next time.

And yes! I am bound and determined to have a next time.
 

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