[Octopus Eggs]: Trapper's Babies - Tank Raised Mercatoris

Sisty was really funny tonight. Since I was overhauling my reef (for the new octo) in the breakfast room, the lights were on well past the norm (lights are normally off at 10:30 ish and feeding is roughly at 11:00 but it was closer to 1:30 tonight. I have fed late many times before but the lights were off at the normal time). The minute I turned the lights off Sisty was out front on the LR doing his very fast arm wiggle and glaring at me (he does not do the arm thing very often any more). When I passed by the tank he sprang to the glass and continued with the frantic arm gesture. Normally, I have to feed a few rounds of Cyclop-eeze before they want their shrimp but he was so determined to get my attention, I offered shrimp after only a couple of squirts and he grabbed it from my fingers. When I offered the shrimp to Medusa, he climbed up my finger and took it directly with his beak (or at least inside her webbing). Dusa is usually fussy about the shrimp and sometimes does not want it from my fingers but will take it from a tube so this was an interesting event. He did not continue to grab at my hand once he had his shrimp and did not try to bite but made it clear I was late feeding and should be ashamed :lol:.

One just does not expect this much interaction/reaction from the Mercs and I wish I knew if there is anything I am doing that has encouraged it or if these two are just unusual. I will put two of the hatchlings in the same tank to see if location and tank size (heavily trafficed room, small hex tank) could be part of the answer.
 
It has been three weeks and still no sign of Miss Broody. I believe she may have died this week behind the shell I noticed wedged in a rock. I think it is possible that she positioned the shell and then was too weak to move it and likely starved. A serpent star has been staying close to the area during most of her disappearance but moved to a new location yesterday. In the past, I sometimes have been able to find a missing octo by locating a serpent and I have been squiting food into the rock in that area with the hope that she would eat but I have not seen any arm movement. The serpent's change of location makes me think she may have died and I cannot get to the shell to check or remove any remains. So far the water is OK and the biologics are well established. I will do extra water changes for the next week and monitor for ammonia but don't know what else I can do.

Five or Six (I still don't have an exact count as I need to see all of them at the same time to be sure) of her young are now recognizable octopuses and are likely to survive. They are eating primarily Cyclop-eeze and less of the live shrimp. I am going to reintroduce some frozen mysis and try adding frozen krill to their nightly feeding since gholland has been having success feeding their brooding mom with several different foods.

I possibly put Sisturus and Medusa in harms way last night. I have mentioned that they are often together and touching each other and sometimes "attack" but never do harm. I went to feed last night and did not notice they were together when I put the Cylop-eeze in the tank over what I thought was one octopus. One fully engulfed the other's mantle with its web and the captured one was struggling to free itself (they have never attached like this nor has one ever had trouble extracting it self). I used the pipette to separate them and they both took shelter in the live rock. Half an hour later they were back at the top of the tank, together and acting normally. I made sure to place the food where there was no direct competition and will continue to be more cautious. Neal mentioned the feeding frenzy instincts of the Humbolts and I wonder if I witnesses something remotely similar.

They are acting normally tonight and were peacefully together near the filter inlet again. This time I started feeding at the other side of the tank and they separated to come feed.
 
I found one of the babies dead two days ago. It looked quite cannabalized and I hope to take a picture before it decomposes. I had separated one of the babies because it appeared to be aggessive (possibly two since I moved it in a barnicle house) but decided to move it back because of my concerns about feeding density. I don't know if reintroducing one to the group made it a target for agression or if it really is more agressive than the rest and killed for housing (there is plenty of prime realestate). The only other things in the net are a few small shrimp and snails. The clean-up crew could have been munching on one that died naturally but my feeling (hope) is that it was killed by another octopus. I hope I am not going to loose the rest to natural causes. At 2.5 months I think I am down to four juveniles.

FYI a hungry pencil urchin can make huge holes in a breeder net. I had to transfer all the shells to the net with the small hole (hopefully everyone was still in residence and not running around in the main tank). I would like to find something like a hair net to replace my netting (these are about twice the size of the standard breeder nets and have a plastic grid floor about 1/3 of the way down and I think a hair net would be about the right size). If anyone knows of a place to find a thick one, please post it.

Still no sign of Miss Broody after about 4 weeks. I would have expected to see a body by now (water parms are OK but I am changing out water weekly in stead of bi-weekly) unless she is indeed trapped behind the suspended shell that I can't even touch, let alone investigate.

The four males are still doing OK. The two in the large tank are not as regular about coming out to feed (they are eating more live crab than previously) and are less interactive and more skiddish than they have been. Sisty and Medusa still come out like clockwork but they are often at the top of the tank (yes, I do more frequent water changes on this tank now too) when they are out. Sisty let me pet him for a while this week (I don't try it often) but both males in the smaller tank seem less interested in the human companion.
 
I think I am down to only three offspring now (I regularly see 3 at one time but there may be a fourth). You just can't get cocky with any success in this hobby. I keep thinking I am missing something important but I keep missing it. There is a possiblilty that the fact that these were inbred effected their mortality BUT I do not find many carcasses. Either they have escaped the net and died (or are not coming to the outer walls, you would never find them in the LR) or they are being consumed (either from an alive state or after natural death) by their sibblings. These little ones do not come out and feed at all like the first group and that also has me puzzled.

The two males in the same tank are also more recluse than they had been (MIA and HideNSeek were always less human sociable than Sisty and Dusa). I will only see them long enough to give a shrimp about every other night and then they quickly vanish.

Sisty and Dusa, on the other hand, continue to greet me nightly and perform at least an hour of ballet. Both sets of males hang out together and are often found touching. Unfortunately, everytime I try to photograph Sisty and Dusa together, they see me and come over to see if there is a food offering. If I give attention to one (usually by rubbing my finger on the tank), you can count on the other to come over and want attention as well (even when they refuse additional food). They have learned an interesting trick. Sisty has done this for quite some time but now Dusa also feeds at the surface and will bring his mantle out of the water in kind of a rolling dance (the third pictures shows part of the movement but they actually bring their full mantle out of the water). When the behavior first started, I changed out water immediately but have since noticed that they only perform the antics when I am known to be present. If most Mercs acted like these two, they would be very popular pets. Unfortunately, I think these are the extreme exception. I also think Dusa would be more timid if he did not follow Sisty's lead.

The pictures were taken with a flash and, unfortunately, reveal their aging much more than in their normal red lighting.
 

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Just because I am afraid their time is getting short, a few more pics of my acrobatic duo, note the requsite cup of coffee:coffee:
 

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Sisty and Dusa seem to be breaking the stereotype for dwarf octos! I love the vids and pics. Do you have any current photos of the babies at this stage?

It would be wonderful if that interactive behavior could be continued through selective breeding... Too bad our girls are laying so many months apart!

Greg
 
Greg,
Sisty is very special and I was terribly disappointed when Dusa (originally Medusa) started to show large suckers (there is a photo of Sisty trying to mate with Dusa so I was not the only one disappointed). I don't think Dusa would be any different than the other two males if he did not live with Sisty. There have not been any other reports of Mercs interacting and I hand feed a shrimp (no stick) to Sisty every night (sometimes Dusa will take one from my fingers but usually wants the plastic tube delivery). He comes to the front of the glass earlier and earlier (and is now sometimes out before lights out - a bad sign I am afraid). A long time ago, I read that it is likely that if an octopus is human friendly, its offspring will be as well but I can't find where I read it and I have no idea if the person recording the statement was going on anything but heresay. Sisty showed to be different from the rest of his sibblings very early and was always rooming with Dusa (which is why they are housed together). I am thinking (based on one and only one clear observation) that it may be that male octopuses (or at least Mercs) are somewhat social with each other where females are totally recluse from the beginning. Since I only had the one female with the first batch, this is an uneducated observation about the females but both pairs of males tend to hang out together for at least part of the evening.

This is the only photo I have recently tried with this batch of young. These do not come out and eat as well as the first group and I rarely see anything but arms (and you will have a hard time finding any part of the two in this picture :hmm:).

Oops, never mind :oops:. It looks like I did not transfer the picture to my hard drive but it was not a real loss since looking at shells in a net does not convey much info.
 
11 month update

All four males are still with me at 11 months and 10 days but they are showing signs of aging. Since Sisturus has always been so active, I have feared he would be my first male to die of old age and I am afraid this will be the case. He is now coming out as early as 7:00 PM with the overhead lights on and seems to be continually hungry (Trapper also always seemed hungry in her final two weeks). He stays primarily white (more clearly observed now that he comes out with the lights on) with only a little patterning. Dusa will also come out once I give Sisty food but his color is better and he generally "goes back to bed" until lights out after checking out the food offering. Sisty stays out but sleeps (eyes closed) on the glass. I have also noticed that his eyes are wide open, even with the lights on but he seems to still be able to see well enough to notice my fingers on the aquarium.
 

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Food Fight

Sisty continues to come out to look for food somewhere between 8:00 and 9:00 PM and is constantly hungry. When offered a freshly killed shrimp, he will try to take your fingers with it. I have been adding more live crabs to the tank as they are disappearing faster (two a week for the tank would survive most of the week until they disappeared until this last month, now I put in two every other or every third day in addition to feeding cyclop-eeze and one dead shore shrimp apiece nightly). Tonight one of them caught a crab very quickly and the other wanted it! Poor focus, I am afraid - not because they separated or moved but because I can't get the autofocus to focus under the red light. They would not separate when I used the flash or put my fingers in the tank. Finally, I offered a third crab and the original capturer kept his meal.
 

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Hey D, you keep finding out new things about these animals all the time, keep up the good work
 
As my 4 males approach their birthday they continue to do strange things nightly. HideNSeek came to the front of the tank to his normal spot on the barnacle condos while I was feeding the two remaining hatchlings (approaching 4 months- saw a mantle tonight for the first time in a long time and they are now the size of 1 month old Bandensis ;>) . Mia decided to come out to the tank front wall (most unusual) and then proceeded to try to mate with HideNSeek. While he was attached to the glass he stretched his hectocotylus out to HideNSeek and began exploring (I could see the triangular tip of the arm as it attempted to explore the mantle opening). HideNSeek (I am assuming I know which is which because of the initial approach of HideNSeek to one of his favorite dens) just sat on his barnacle and Mia jumped on top of him about the time I noticed the arm tip. The resulting pose looked very much like Roy's picture of two Merc "mating" and not like the two matings I have observed between HideNSeek and Miss Broody. The difference may well be that Miss Broody was in a den and not in the open or that she was a willing participant or, of course, that she was actually female. After a couple of minutes, HideNSeek managed to free himself and swam off into the tank none the worse for wear.

This is the second "mating" I have observed between two males. Both times it was when there was no available female (Miss Broody has been missing for two months). The mating between Sisty and Medusa was more like the male/female matings of Miss Broody and HideNSeek, where one octopus was in a shell and the other approached and explored with the hectocotylized arm without violence or struggle. Besides their age, it is also notable that Mia has not actually mated as both male/female matings in this tank were the pairing of HideNSeek and Miss Broody.

Sorry for not even being able to provide blurry pics this time but it was either watch or get the camera ...
 
I have only seen one of the males in the larger tank (I think it is HideNSeek but I am not sure) this week. The little suspect male has left the net again and I have not located him in three days. There is one baby that has remained in the net that rarely leaves her shell and she seems to be doing fine.

Sisty and Dusa continue to greet us nightly and eat well. Dusa has taken to catching crabs a couple of times a week but I have yet to see Sisty catch one of his own. Tonight Dusa carried his crab around while walking on the glass so I was able to get an almost in focus picture. Unfortunately, I missed photographing more strange behavior. Dusa was walking around with his crab and decided to attack Sisty (in their normal, no hurt attack mode). Sisty was minding his own business and not threatening to take the food but Dusa crossed the tank to aggravate him. I am not sure if he was bragging, trying to share or just senile (they are 12 months minus a week today)
 

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Just out of curiosity, how big are they now, and what was their growth rate over time? Did they stop growing at some age?
 

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