There are currently virtually NO captive BRED available to the public. Occasionally we see a wild caught female lay eggs (frequent) and produce viable hatchlings (rare) that are available. Most octopuses cannot be kept together so breeding attempts are pretty much a lab environment experiment. The one exception to date for the hobbyist has been O. mercatoris, a nocturnal dwarf from the Caribbean. We have had limited success with keeping sibblings from a WC female in a single tank and produce viable offspring. The few journals we have stopped at one round of in-breeding (likely something that happens often in the wild with this species). Only about 5 hatchlings survived from each of the broods (varying from 6 to ~75 hatchlings) and the keepers did not offer them for sale.
On occasion someone will have a WC female bimac lay fertile eggs in an aquarium (to my recollection in 6+ years, we have one group that was a high school project and one that was a college project) where the hatchlings were offered for re-homing. In the latest case, the animals could not be shipped and were only distributed locally.
RE: A) I think you are confusing sizing of O.vulgaris with O.briareus. A 125 would be too small for most O. vulgaris (LittleBit was an exception and extremely small, el Diablo was more typical of the Caribbean sizing - smaller than European versions). This is a common misconception because of the "common" names for each. O. vulgaris is known as the "common octopus" world wide. O. briareus is known as the "common Caribbean octopus" and often the Caribbean is not used.
At the top of our Journals forum is a set of green "stickys" titled List of Our Octopuses 20xx that includes keeper, species(when known) and origination(when known). The animal name is a link back to the journal. It is worth the time to look through some of the journals on the species that interest you.
On occasion someone will have a WC female bimac lay fertile eggs in an aquarium (to my recollection in 6+ years, we have one group that was a high school project and one that was a college project) where the hatchlings were offered for re-homing. In the latest case, the animals could not be shipped and were only distributed locally.
RE: A) I think you are confusing sizing of O.vulgaris with O.briareus. A 125 would be too small for most O. vulgaris (LittleBit was an exception and extremely small, el Diablo was more typical of the Caribbean sizing - smaller than European versions). This is a common misconception because of the "common" names for each. O. vulgaris is known as the "common octopus" world wide. O. briareus is known as the "common Caribbean octopus" and often the Caribbean is not used.
At the top of our Journals forum is a set of green "stickys" titled List of Our Octopuses 20xx that includes keeper, species(when known) and origination(when known). The animal name is a link back to the journal. It is worth the time to look through some of the journals on the species that interest you.
. The article my "article" mentions is WELL worth reading.
