Wonderpus - LFS giveaway

[Animal Mother]

Other than making me seasick , nice video of its movements.

I need to quit squeezing the camera lady while she's working I suppose. For the most part I just wanted a few clips to maybe catch a confirmation on the ID and something to show the guy who gave it to me to ease his mind.

I'll try to get a shot of the tank.

How big do these guys get again? I've seen them a little bigger than this one but I have never seen one next to anything that gave me a relative size comparison.

 

[Animal Mother]

No activity to report for yesterday.

This morning I got out the flashlight and did some spotlighting, caught a reflection... and it's chillin in the overflow box. Now I wish I had gone with a clear box! Oh well, as long as it's happy. It'd have to squeeze through pantyhose to make it down the standpipe. There are only 3 shrimp remaining in the display and I saw none in the overflow box with the 'pus.

 

[Animal Mother]

Looks like 3rd and 4th right arm are the severed arms. 3rd is half as long as the others, 4th is severed at the base.

 

[skywindsurfer]

Is it a He or a She?...The world may never know.

 

[Animal Mother]

Correction. 2nd and 4th right arm are missing. 3rd right arm is much shorter than the rest. So male it is I suppose.

 

[Thales]

Looks like a male to me.

 

[Animal Mother]

We threw a couple dozen prawns off into the tank yesterday. We saw him snare 2 back to back immediately. I have seen several shrimp exoskeletons being blown around in the tank since, so I assume he's pigging out. I kind of like the fact that he spends his "quiet time" in the overflow box. There's just enough space between the tank and the wall for me to squeeze my head in and catch a peek and check on him. I dropped an angled pvc piece in for him to take cover inside if he so desires but for the most part he just stays on the wall in a corner all bunched up.

Tank is finally clearing up since he hasn't been digging and resting under rocks in the sand. I wish my sump were bigger and I'd just keep the bulk of my rock down there.

 

[Neogonodactylus]

It is a he. The third right arm of sexually mature Wunderpus is only about 1/3 the length of the other arms.

Roy

 

[Neogonodactylus]

Wunderpus ligula

Here is a fairly decent shot of the hectocotylus tip showing the ligula and spermatophoral groove. The tip of the hectocotylus is usually coiled, but you can see where the ligula folds back on itself.

Roy

 

[Neogonodactylus]

Hectocotylus

Here the third right arm is clearly visiable. This male is small, but was capable of producing and transferring spermatophores.

Roy

 

[skywindsurfer]

Glad that's been settled. lol It's great that he's out and about and "pigging out" as you say.

 

[Animal Mother]

I found my Cephalopods book. It says max size for these guys is 12 inches with 2 inch mantle.

Is 12 inches (max. size) arm tip to mantle, or arm span?

 

[Animal Mother]

Jenn has dubbed this little guy "Willie Wonder".

I left the lights off all day yesterday. I glanced in the tank at 4:30 in the afternoon and he was sitting out in the open, under an overhang, arms spread out, eyes straight at me. With ambient light from across the room we watched him do some hunting for about 30 minutes at about 9pm. After that he proceeded to play in the current of the overflow, allowing his arms to get sucked into it, then pulling them out and climbing away from the overflow, then doing it over and over and over again.

He was still out this morning, perched up near the overflow, arms out in the water column swaying. He allowed me to watch him for about 20 minutes before he decided to climb off into the rocks. I saw him again briefly on the other side of the tank. Now he rests in his spot, under the overhang, arms spread and eyes attentive to the living room.

He is eating about 5 shrimp a day best I can tell.

 

[Neogonodactylus]

Wunderpus really are happiest when they can dig - which is hard to arrange in a small reef tank. I have found that you can partially satisfy the need to dig by allowing them to crawl in between to dark pieces of plastic sheeting. I routinely use a black photographic background in my tanks and noticed that Wunderpus kept crawling in between the glass and the plastic an hour or two after dawn. Reasoning that this was satisfying a thigmotactic need as well as a dark refuge, I placed a second black plastic sheet against the back of the tank. The Wunderpus seem to be operating more or less on a crepuscular periodicity.

Roy

 

[skywindsurfer]

Sounds like he's doing great. I bet it's mesmerizing to sit there and watch him sway back and forth in the current. Would it cause too much stress to create a burrow for them using a clear box or cylinder cut in half and glued to the front or side of the tank so you can view them inside of their den? I had an idea of doing this before by gluing a clear box to the bottom front panel centered with a clear tube also glued to to the front panel and centered on the box so that I could view the octopus as it crawled in and out of it's den.