So I received an octopus and her eggs today....

[Barbie]

I will ask the girls if they for sure had live fry by the 5th day. I think the 4th is more accurate though. I prepared them for the fact that they're so hard to feed and that they'd die, but it was still a bummer, nonetheless. I know Joanne took pictures with her microscope too, so I might be able to add to the collection with a few of her shots, also. I meant to document daily, so I feel like I really fell down on the job, but at least they'll have those images to share with everyone.

And our friend is in the recovery center and doing great, (read ornery and wanting to go home!) so thank you all for the best wishes .

Barbie

 

[monty]

Ok. It seems like there are a few options:

1) a forum under Ceph Care for "Raising Cephalopods from Eggs" or similar
pro: covers octos and cuttles, and any other cephs people try (good luck with that)
con: cuttle hatchlings are well covered in ceph care, and we get nobody who "accidentally" has cuttle eggs, but a ton who are "my octo laid eggs, what do I do?" Also, they're different enough that the crossover advice will be mostly irrelevant, except maybe where to get food.

2) a forum under Physiology and Biology for "Ceph Aquaculture"
pro: will probably get more attention from the pros
con: big, scary words, and panicked "my octo laid eggs" people may not think to look anywhere but Octopus Care

3) a forum under Octopus Care for "Raising Octopuses From Eggs"
pro: probably the most obvious place
con: octo specific, and may not get read as much by pros

I like option 3, but I'm open to other opinions (or other options). I was thinking that linking to the PDF about culturing vulgaris would be good, and I guess if we get permission from Zyan the embargo is over on the TFH articles, so we could put his bimac aquaculture article. I keep hoping we'll get official PDFs of those, but maybe I should just scan the TONMO content... Any suggestions of threads we can actually move to the new forum would be good.

Putting an explicit note to "please let us know how it turned out" seems desirable, since it seems very frequent for people to talk a lot before hatching, and then never report back what exactly they did and what exactly happened (thanks for being an exception, Barbie!) I'm not sure if people who say "I'm trying even though you said it wouldn't work" just get stuck in a mindset of "it'll work for me, I'll be the exception" and then feel somehow embarrassed or guilty and never want to post again, or if there's some other factor I don't understand...

I'm a bit concerned that many threads mix and match; it's not clear where the threads on Varys' and Trapper's offspring switch from being "aquaculture" to "journal about a bunch of mercs," for example, so maybe more having a sticky that refers to past threads works better than moving threads into the new forum...

thoughts?

 

[esquid]

I vote for option #2. But, as I work at an aquaculture facility and and getting a degree in big, scary technical words I realize I am somewhat biased.

 

[sorseress]

I vote for option #2. But, as I work at an aquaculture facility and and getting a degree in big, scary technical words I realize I am somewhat biased.

I didn't realize you could get a BS in "big, scary technical words" although I know a lot of people who use big, scary technical words who are really into BS.

 

[gholland]

We are also inclined toward #2. Having been one of those panicked "my octo laid eggs" people in the not-too-distant past, I have no doubt that members will quickly point newcomers to the appropriate forum. I have to wonder how many newcomers would find it on their own even if it was in "Ceph Care". It would definitely benefit the "accidental" egg people, but I think it is just as important for the pros and experienced hobbyists to help to "manage/shape" it. As to having threads such as Vary's babies or Trapper's children/grandchildren... I think it would be preferable to condense/copy/paste relevant info out of those journals as to what types of foods or tank set-ups worked and didn't work for a particular species, leaving out a lot of the other fun stuff so people don't have to scroll through page after page of journal to get what they were looking for.

Speaking from personal experience, I think most people don't report failures because they are simply heart-broken and/or ashamed after the build-up and hoping for so long. We certainly did when we thought we had lost all of Varys' babies! We were just lucky enough to have a second wave of hatchlings so we could try something different after seeing what didn't work for the first wave. That's the info that we would be able to pull out of the journals and condense in a single thread in the proposed forum. It will still be hard to get people over those feelings.

It might be important to have the proposed forum restricted to members the way "Exotics" is so that we could include aquaculture of those species side-by-side with the more common ones.

 

[esquid]

I didn't realize you could get a BS in "big, scary technical words" although I know a lot of people who use big, scary technical words who are really into BS.

Yes, Clinical Lab Science is a BS in the diagnosis of infectious disease caused by microscopic single celled things with really big scary names. Which, contrary to what most of the people in the marine science dept. at school think, actually can be applied to my minor of aquaculture: the science of making aquatic creatures breed while living a space the fraction the size of their natural habitat and growing out the offspring in very high population densities.

Although, I do have one prof who wants to be my advisor for an MS in "ehm, it really doesn't matter as long as you keep bringing in the baked goods".

 

[DWhatley]

Although, I do have one prof who wants to be my advisor for an MS in "ehm, it really doesn't matter as long as you keep bringing in the baked goods".

Better than in my day when it was, ... "keep wearing short skirts"

Monty,

I always like a sticky or two on a forum with specialized content that explains the purpose and desired content of posts. It would bee (hive in deed!) nice to list a few things that would be good to track, specifically, what food is being tried, the water temperature, the longevity before failure and the tank configuration(s) - including water flow and lighting.

A second sticky might be a thread that references other threads in the journals forums for people looking for, "the rest of the story".