Wunderpus

[marinebio_guy]

Just got in two Wunderpus. I have one in a 75 and the other I'm still putting a tank together for so is in a holding tank for now. They are both females so hopefully one or both will lay viable eggs so I can do some larval rearing trials.

So far they are doing good and both are already eating frozen shrimp.

 

[tonmo]

Congrats, looking forward to this one! Note, I moved this thread to the Exotics forum... only registered members may view the contents.

 

[allison finch]

Sigh.

 

[tonmo]

In other news, long time, no see @allison finch!

@marinebio_guy, how is this going?

 

[marinebio_guy]

Things look to be going good, they have seemed to have settled into the tanks (started borrowing under my rocks) in the day and usually come out at night. Will keep my fingers crossed, usually the first few few weeks are the hardest.

 

[Rhodi Hawk]

I love this-- two at once, in separate tanks. Just curious, are the tanks in the same room? I'm wondering whether over time they might see each other. That would be pretty interesting but without the "two to a tank" risk.

 

[marinebio_guy]

They are not in the same room, one is at my house and one is at work. I would not think it would be a problem to let them see each other as I've kept octopus in tanks next to each other but there might be some aggressive behavior at first, until they realize they can't get to each other. It would be interesting to keep multiple together to observe their interaction but would have to have a very large tank. I think it would be really interesting to observe between and within species interactions and habitat use. Just need to let my boss let me use one of the 20ft tanks at work

 

[marinebio_guy]

Well one of the octopus has laid eggs and I've been given permission to rear them at the lab . I'll check for viability and try to get some pics soon. Luckily they should be hatching at a time when one of our larval systems is empty, now I just need to try to track down the food.

 

[DWhatley]

EXCITING! For food, have you considered trying to find female crab that are about to lay eggs and putting them in a refugium/sump? I'm pseudo experimenting with a pair of blue crabs (no hatchlings to feed, just playing with viability). The male is almost large enough to try to add him to the female's environment (he recently shed for the third time and I am waiting for the shell to fully harden). She may kill him so I have been dragging my feet on putting them together. If you can find females already with fertile eggs, you may have a good food source.

 

[marinebio_guy]

We have a crab hatchery at our campus and I know some other people in Maryland that breed them so I'm going to try to see if they might have some around the time the eggs hatch. If I can't get that then I'm going to try to get shrimp larvae, and if that doesn't work I'm going with artemia and/or fish larvae. Unfortunately I removed the eggs this afternoon and there are only ~60, hopefully she will lay more as it will be easy for them to get lost in a 1000L tank. The eggs look to be in good shape but until they are ~10 days old it will be hard to tell if there are any malformations/viability.

 

[DWhatley]

If there are enough viable eggs will you keep separate batches and record food success (PLEASE CONSIDER )?

 

[marinebio_guy]

I don't think I'll be able to this time just due to the amount of eggs if I had a couple of thousand than I could do some different diet treatments with replicates, but right now I'll just see if I can get them to settlement, or at least past day 8. We know that decapod zoea is the best diet for vulgaris, the only real question is can they survive off a fish larvae diet which paralarvae have been known to eat in the wild but zoea seem to be the dominate prey type.

 

[DWhatley]

There is also an Alaskan octopus (I don't remember the species) that managed settlement on crab zoea. NOTHING has survived on brine shrimp, it is not worth trying. I sure hope these are viable eggs and am anxious to hear how long you can keep survivors.

With my failure to have any O. briareus survive (parents were survivors of egg birth from wild mom) and not having my bendensis eggs hatch at all (with a couple of early exceptiongs but the hatchlings died), I am thinking that something in the water (or missing from the water) during the egg maturation process my also be a factor.

 

[marinebio_guy]

Some of the people in Spain have got vulgaris through with artemia but the survival was real low so it's going to be my last option.

I hate when the only option that's possible is that there is something in the water There are so many things that can be off and very few good/cheap ways to test for them, beside the standard Ammonia, Nitrate, Nitrite, pH, etc. I was having a problem the other day with my copepod culture eggs not hatching and determined it the sodium thiosulfate (de-chlorinator), which I had heard can affect animals but this was the first time I had seen a very major effect from it. Earlier this year we had a problem which I think was super saturation but did not have the $1000+ meter to test for it so just had to plug the inlet to the saturation cone and check for leaks by the pump and hope that fixed the issue. And then the problem might be two things acting together with neither one alone being elevated enough to cause a problem, I can't remember how many nights of sleep I've lost thinking about this stuff.

 

[DWhatley]

LOL, I am glad I am not the only one who drives themselves crazy over, "WHY?"