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Wonderpus - Fontanelle

Thales,
Sorry, can't follow your beliefs. Lucy would not adjust to the name change after 15 years. I can sort of see naming an octopus after the soft spot in the head - for a number of reasons, beginning with keeping one. My dad calls everyone Charlie at one time or another, perhaps squirrels in the attic is appropriate in that case.
 
dwhatley;88735 said:
Thales,
Sorry, can't follow your beliefs. Lucy would not adjust to the name change after 15 years. I can sort of see naming an octopus after the soft spot in the head - for a number of reasons, beginning with keeping one. My dad calls everyone Charlie at one time or another, perhaps squirrels in the attic is appropriate in that case.

:roflmao:
 
:biggrin2:

Fontanelle ate again last night. Yesterday (ooo distracted by cuttlefish sex!) I dropped in a shrimp in the hopes of seeing him stalk and catch. I left the room for a few minutes only to come back and fine him in his 'den', shrimp in arms. Discarded carapace on the sand this morning.

If anyone has any ideas about something to make artificial 'muck' for a substrate, let me know.
 
Thales,
I have also been thinking about the other aspect that Roy mentioned, the need to "wonder". Is there enough room in the tank to set up any kind of maze? It wouldn't make the tank bigger but would make it seem that way. Perhaps a circular tack? Trapper (up until becoming den ridden) would make a regular route in a counter clockwise direction about every two weeks, staying in mostly different dens so it makes me think that it is possible to achieve more "space" by experimenting with the rock layout.

Dutchcourage, super idea!
 
HE MADE A DEN!

So...
Panic tonight. Got home and couldn't find him. Looked in all the usual spots. Nada. No water around the tank, no drips, no holes. So I started digging. Turns out he dug a den under the rock in the tank! I put the rock back, but he ended up coming out of the den, so I fed him, then he went behind the intake of the overflow. :biggrin2:

First pic is him just before leaving the den.
Second is him munching on a shrimp.
Third is him wrapped around the shrimp.

Hopefully he will dig himself back in!
 
Thales;88878 said:
So...
Panic tonight. Got home and couldn't find him. Looked in all the usual spots. Nada. No water around the tank, no drips, no holes. So I started digging. Turns out he dug a den under the rock in the tank! I put the rock back, but he ended up coming out of the den, so I fed him, then he went behind the intake of the overflow. :biggrin2:

First pic is him just before leaving the den.
Second is him munching on a shrimp.
Third is him wrapped around the shrimp.

Hopefully he will dig himself back in!


He really is a beautiful animal!
 
Thales,
No link :sad: . I was just thinking "out loud" so to speak. Trap's tank is a 45 gallon hex that is heavily modified from it's original center overflow design. The overflow is no longer in the center but it is not against the back wall either. We redesigned the tank to have a sandy "beach front" side but a live rock pile and side "glass" (actually acrylic or we couldn't have moved the overflow :wink: ) that could be octo accessed all the way around. This worked very well for a "round" tank and probably for a square tank but the maze might be a better thought for a rectangle.

My thought for a maze would be multiple rock piles with the maze being the octo sized muck/sand in between. I see a pile in the center against the back wall with two additional piles centered front to back and spaced so that the octopus could comfortably circle either of the two center groupings. I would think you would need to pile the rock as high a 1 foot to make it effective.

We secured the potentially dangerous rock with epoxy and gorilla glue to prevent rock slide in expectation of a mid sized octo. Trap turned out to be mercatoris so we really have not tested the design as intended. That being said, the way we went about designing the tank was to look for photos and videos of the expected critter in the wild and then layed out the tank in the best emulation we could muster, giving conisderation to the idea that it would always be a ceph tank but might have different critters at any given time. So I guess I am saying you still have to invent the spokes for your wheel but the whole project is experimental ...
 
:biggrin2:

I think before getting that complicated I'll try a maze of acrylic tubes! However, I might just be upgrading his whole tank.

I watched him hunt and eat today. He snags prey with a tentacle, but he doesn't constrict it the way I have seen other occy's constrict food. He just grabs it, pulls it to his skirt and eats it. He does bring his legs in, but not to wrap around the food.
 
Thales,
My thinking on the maze was the open water wandering that Roy mentioned so the tubes wouldn't accomplish the idea. Maybe just a center rock pile so that he could "wonder" in a circle to give the feel of additional bottom space.

Please do keep the little notes of interest posted (i.e. your feeding observation). I wish there were more of them even on the common critters and even suggested to Tony that we start a section that could thread each individual octopus. A continuing threat might help point out both common and unique traits over time.
 
Got some video of him digging into the substrate in the middle of the night using 'super night shot'. He was nice enough to dig in against the glass in the front corner of the tank. Pretty neat, editing now. I think the problem with the substrate is that if you dig a hole, the sides fall in filling the hole - something that muck doesn't do. So, I used a credit I had for a gallon of caribsea Mineral Mud. My plan is to section off a side of the tank with rock and back fill it with the mud. Hopefully, it will have some structural integrity. Oooo, I guess I'll try it in a bowl first to see if it works before I go stressing the critter.

I emailed the Miracle Mud people but didn't hear back.

Here is a pic of him digging in - the video is better.
 
I just got home, about 10 pm, and went to check on him. I turned the room light on and looked into the tank and would have sworn he was dead. He was upside down, light colored and twisty. I tapped on the tank, he flipped over and looked at me like I was interrupting something private (anthropomorphizing I know). Then he dropped the shrimp he had been eating and started to prowl the tank. Very very weird.
 

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