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- Mar 8, 2004
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To get good results with an easier large-egged species, Zyan and his family used their whole garage, and a whole system full of tanks. Octopets was even bigger, and used an open seawater system. I think marinebio_guy used a bit smaller setup, but had access to fresh seawater and an entire research lab. And that's for the "easy" large-egged species.
Small-egged species have only ever been raised in marine labs that had millions of dollars of resources available and were locate extremely close to the water. There is a paper here:
The completed life cycle of the octopus
that describes the setup used by researchers at a marine lab in Spain to culture vulgaris.
All that being said, if someone really wanted to try raising a small-egged species, I would think the best place to start would be bimaculatus since the care requirements once the young have grown a bit are identical to bimaculoides which we understand pretty well.
I'm concerned, though, that all breeding programs for octopuses or squids are pretty much likely to be a nightmare. Since almost all of them only brood once at the ends of their lives, and essentially lay a whole lot of eggs at once, there is either a dearth or a plethora of offspring at any given time. In the wild, the young are dispersed to a wide area, and can find their own territories and dens and food sources. In a closed system, they never have the opportunity, and this can lead to fratricide and cannibalism, as well as less drastic overcrowding, and also the far more pragmatic problem that there will frequently be far more small octopuses than could find homes, so despite having put maybe $100 into raising each octopus baby, only a small fraction of them can be sold.
Keep in mind that most cephalopods, and particularly small-egged octos, are what are called "r-strategists" in that they produce far more offspring per brood than the local environment can support, and naturally have a low survival rate and a very wide dispersal of offspring. Any attempt to raise them in captivity can't reproduce that.
Small-egged species have only ever been raised in marine labs that had millions of dollars of resources available and were locate extremely close to the water. There is a paper here:
The completed life cycle of the octopus
that describes the setup used by researchers at a marine lab in Spain to culture vulgaris.
All that being said, if someone really wanted to try raising a small-egged species, I would think the best place to start would be bimaculatus since the care requirements once the young have grown a bit are identical to bimaculoides which we understand pretty well.
I'm concerned, though, that all breeding programs for octopuses or squids are pretty much likely to be a nightmare. Since almost all of them only brood once at the ends of their lives, and essentially lay a whole lot of eggs at once, there is either a dearth or a plethora of offspring at any given time. In the wild, the young are dispersed to a wide area, and can find their own territories and dens and food sources. In a closed system, they never have the opportunity, and this can lead to fratricide and cannibalism, as well as less drastic overcrowding, and also the far more pragmatic problem that there will frequently be far more small octopuses than could find homes, so despite having put maybe $100 into raising each octopus baby, only a small fraction of them can be sold.
Keep in mind that most cephalopods, and particularly small-egged octos, are what are called "r-strategists" in that they produce far more offspring per brood than the local environment can support, and naturally have a low survival rate and a very wide dispersal of offspring. Any attempt to raise them in captivity can't reproduce that.
