• Looking to buy a cephalopod? Check out Tomh's Cephs Forum, and this post in particular shares important info about our policies as it relates to responsible ceph-keeping.

the perfect octopus

if it is chierchiae i can take care of it but i am not sure if i can take care of wonderpus or mimic. i am pretty sure if they do mix it up i can take care of it from help from everyone on tonmo. if not i can donate it to my local aquarium. i have read a lot but reading can only go so far.
 
Even experienced ceph keepers have a difficult time keeping a Mimic or Wonderpus. The only one of these kind of octos that has been kept long-term by an aquarist was by Thales. His system was pretty much catered to the needs of this species. If it is a Mimic or Wonderpus you are better off leaving it in the fish store and not wasting your money because it will likely die in a short period of time and they are expensive.
 
ok i will take pics before i buy it and post them on here. they will hold the octo for me and a few of the workers there have kept octos before so they can most likely take care of it for a few days until everyone identifies it.
 
One key to knowing would be the asking price. See what price they expect to be paid for the octopus, as I understand it, the going rate for the know exotics is around $300 but I don't know what they might ask for an O. chierchiae.
 
well idk if you can go by the price because this store is really expensive on certain things so it might be a higher price. i will post what they say tomorrow afternoon.
 
ok bad news. i just asked them and i was told diff. than a few days ago. it is not o. chierchiae like i was told. they said they can get mimics. i am glad i didn't order one. i am going to keep trying to get o. chierchiae. i have an empty tank running so when i find one my tank is ready.
 
I wish I had never mentioned Octopus chierchiae as the "Perfect Octopus". While it may have several desirable traits, it obviously has one major problem. It is extremely rare and could easily be threatened by collecting because it is highly recognizable and occurs in accessible habitats.

Roy
 
fishkid6692;112889 said:
ok bad news. i just asked them and i was told diff. than a few days ago. it is not o. chierchiae like i was told. they said they can get mimics. i am glad i didn't order one. i am going to keep trying to get o. chierchiae. i have an empty tank running so when i find one my tank is ready.

Please, for the sake of the animal and the industry, get some more experience before you start dealing with exotic species.
 
i said in my post that i'm not getting the mimic. i want to get a chierchiae. they aren't hard like mimics. they are rare yes but i can take care of it.
 
What is your experience with cephs?

We really don't know if o. chierchiae are hard to keep or aren't hard to keep.
We don't know if they ship well or not.
There aren't actually reports on anyone having them in the hobby for at least the last two years - if any at all.
It is unknown what species the octo in the other thread actually is.
The rare thing is actually the bigger issue and of more concern. If we know they are rare, very few of us have any business actively seeking these animals out or enabling people to collect them, and it seems that no one has any business getting them collected if they aren't going to try to breed them.

A couple people that have long, successful track records with cephs have been trying to get these animals to breed them. I think it would be much better for everyone involved if we waited for them to have success rather than trying to obtain a rare animal as a curiosity.
 
Thales, the first beer is on me ! Thanks for summing up what I have been stumbling to say for so long.
 
Unless this is O. zonatus, which I doubt, I can add a bit of information on shipping and care in the aquarium. In the late 70's I brought several from Panama to Berkeley. I had no idea what I was doing and transported and kept them as I would stomatopods. I didn't lose any in transit (despite being very cold) and one female laid 5 clutches over several months. They must be hardy since I freely admit that I didn't have a clue how to keep them. I must say, it perhaps was not a bad thing that I treated them like stomatopods. They live in the same type cavities, occur in the low intertidal where they occasionally are exposed (and exist for a few water on just the water in the cavity), and are thermally tolerant. This was still a couple of years before Rodaniche published on them. I didn't even know that it was a big deal that the females were iteroparous. This is probably why I've been kicking myself all these years. I had the opportunity to study them and I totally blew it. It was my experience with O. chierchiae that was partly responsible for my becoming interested in pygmy octopuses and start to study them.

Roy
 
fishkid6692;112919 said:
i said in my post that i'm not getting the mimic. i want to get a chierchiae. they aren't hard like mimics. they are rare yes but i can take care of it.

Please try to take a step back, and look at how what you want interacts with the rest of the world. Whether you can take care of it is only one factor to consider. Suppose that there are only a few of these octopuses left in the wild, and some greedy collector knows where they are. If the collector is greedy enough, and thinks that s/he can sell them for a big profit, they may wipe out the entire remaining population of the animal. Is your having a cute, striped octopus more important than the survival of the whole species?
 
Neogonodactylus;112924 said:
Unless this is O. zonatus, which I doubt, I can add a bit of information on shipping and care in the aquarium. In the late 70's I brought several from Panama to Berkeley. I had no idea what I was doing and transported and kept them as I would stomatopods. I didn't lose any in transit (despite being very cold) and one female laid 5 clutches over several months. They must be hardy since I freely admit that I didn't have a clue how to keep them. I must say, it perhaps was not a bad thing that I treated them like stomatopods. They live in the same type cavities, occur in the low intertidal where they occasionally are exposed (and exist for a few water on just the water in the cavity), and are thermally tolerant. This was still a couple of years before Rodaniche published on them. I didn't even know that it was a big deal that the females were iteroparous. This is probably why I've been kicking myself all these years. I had the opportunity to study them and I totally blew it. It was my experience with O. chierchiae that was partly responsible for my becoming interested in pygmy octopuses and start to study them.

Roy

Great stuff Roy!

I think it important to point out that your success with shipping them may or may not have any bearing on how they would be collected or shipped in the marine ornamental trade. I would prolly even go farther and say that the MO trade would treat them very poorly, and that any animal received through that chain of custody could easily be stressed or damaged.
 

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