SueNami - O. briareus

We totally enjoy keeping the briareus even though he has not (and I don't expect much more progress) become human interactive (he is human tollerant and comes out to watch us at supper each night). I miss having a resident hummelincki and keep an open tank for another but we will likely also keep a tank for briareus as well. Something about the grace, size and general appearance of the animal is totally addictive.
 
dwhatley;138555 said:
We totally enjoy keeping the briareus even though he has not (and I don't expect much more progress) become human interactive (he is human tollerant and comes out to watch us at supper each night). I miss having a resident hummelincki and keep an open tank for another but we will likely also keep a tank for briareus as well. Something about the grace, size and general appearance of the animal is totally addictive.

I'm surprised your briareus is so stand offish after so long D.

Beautiful pictures.
 
AM,
We think there is a physical problem with his eye sight that may be the reason. We suspected extreme far sightedness early on and everything points to this being the case. SueNami does not seem to be able to see or even detect motion if anything is closer than about 18 inches (46 cm). He will notice a crab at about that distance (he gets a little excited, changes his eye color and looks very alert) and then hunt with his arms until he locates it, same with frozen shrimp (he managed to catch the live one we brought back from FL but it likely ran into him as is often the case with the crabs). He approaches our hand some nights but once he is in the blind area, he is very timid and retracts quickly when he finds our fingers.

His distance sight seems fine and he can detect motion at least 15 feet away (eyes or skin will change color when my son comes down the stairs or the dogs hurry through the room).

I don't know if his attraction for the floating cube (only while eating) has anything to do with the blindness or if it is just the normal capturing of the food "stick" we so often see. He does seem to use it like a child's float sometimes while he is enjoying his shrimp. Once he is finished eating, he slowly releases it (it never zooms to the surface so the release is quite controlled).

While we were in FL he did not eat well and is now showing a lot of marbled pink in stead of his more common white. Luis said he was out frequently after dark and is coming out to peak at us during dinner (his normal behavior) so I don't know if he was aware of our absence of if we are just seeing aging (not necessiarily senesence) changes.
 
dwhatley;138587 said:
While we were in FL he did not eat well and is now showing a lot of marbled pink in stead of his more common white. Luis said he was out frequently after dark and is coming out to peak at us during dinner (his normal behavior) so I don't know if he was aware of our absence of if we are just seeing aging (not necessiarily senesence) changes.

sorry to hear.. hope he is ok!
 
Missing the shrimp

Here are a couple of stills and videos link1, link2 and link3 of SueNami missing a live shrimp. He always eventually eats them but this was the first time he let us see him hunting (and accenting the reasons we think he cannot see anything closer than about 8 inches). We saw four missed attempts, the first, unphotographed being the most spectacular. Neal made the comment that watching him pounce was better than watching the fireworks this week :roll:

He has moved to the limit of his sight distance and reached up to quickly touch my fingers several times in the last week. Tonight he did not act like my fingers were hot when he touched but still did not linger very long. I have been trying to think of ways to work with socializing him at the 8 inch distance but my creativity is not up to par for this challenge.
 

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SueNami CATCHES a live shrimp - video

We fed SueNami another live shrimp tonight and this time he put on quite a show and caught it.

Edit: reposted video to YouTube
 
CaptFish;139027 said:
Very cool! I love the parachute attack.
I may have to try some live shrimp.

While we were researching octo care we saw a video that had a briareus in parachute mode. From that moment, Neal has wanted to keep one but it was three years after we became octo keepers before we acquired SueNami. Now I will likely always have an empty tank held open for both a briareus and a hummelincki when we don't have one in-house.

In spite of what the bait shops will tell you and what you likely experience in the bait well, they do relatively well in an aquarium. When we have had the opportunity, we have brought them home (LOTS of bubbles in the bucket). This time 5 died on the 12 hour trip home (still fresh enough to freeze for octo food) but 7 survived and have done well in non-octo aquariums. One lives in an experimental 8 gallon bio-orb with live rock and an air ring - large weekly water changes required - as the only filtration and water movement.

Great video "D" it was very interesting and entertaining watching him trying to catch it.

Tommy, there are three more videos linked in the post above with the two pictures that also show SueNami on the hunt (he was not successful and caught the shrimp sometime later while we were sleeping). He has been very slow to do normal octo things (not typical of other briareus) and we are delighted to see him manage to hunt in spite of his eye-sight problems.
 
SueNami seems to be making another of his slow steps toward socialization. We are seeing him out more often, he is more actively hunting even the dead food (I think feeding the live shrimp has helped) and allowed me to reach past his blind spot and gently pet him between the eyes for maybe 30 seconds. When he decided that was enough he slowly slid down into his rocks but there was no panic and he did not go to the "leave me alone" side of the tank.

We fed the next to last live shrimp last night and SunNami successfully used a different technique to catch the swimming food. I ran to get the camera and got a quick video of the catch.

Edit: video uploaded to Youtube and reposted.
 
Tubing, Octo style

A couple of shots showing SueNami crossing from one side of the tank to the other.
 

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Sucker Shedding

SueNami sheds his sucker lining several times a week, far more than the hummelincki or mercatrois. Today I happened to see him in the process (usually he is fully behind the LR and all we see is floating skin disks) and was surprised to see that he uses the LR to scrap off the dead skin. I could see individual suckers rubbing on the LR to remove the disks. Very cool. I grabbed the camera but he noticed my presence and move his arm out of view.:hmm:
 

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