• Looking to buy a cephalopod? Check out Tomh's Cephs Forum, and this post in particular shares important info about our policies as it relates to responsible ceph-keeping.

zebra/mimic/wonderpus

nyaquatic

Hatchling
Registered
Joined
Apr 17, 2008
Messages
6
Hi,

First time poster.
I recently aquired this beauty in a Bali shipment.
Came in identified as a zebra octopus.
Is it a "zebra octopus", a mimic octopus, a wonderpus, or are they all one and the same.

FWIW, it's doing great. Hunting tons of crabs/shrimp. Active and eating.
 

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A zebra is any octo that has black and white stripes. It is the worst kind of common name because it clearly refers to several different species. It's like calling damsels, wrasse and anthias a 'blue fish'. :biggrin2:

Thaumoctopus mimicus is the mimic ocotpus is thankfully rarely seen in the trade.

Wunderpus photogenicus is the wunderpus and is sadly seen too often in the trade.
 
:welcome: to TONMO!

I just moved this thread to "Exotics" because we prefer to keep discussion of these species over there... but I in no way mean that you should have thought it was inappropriate for "ID requests."

I posted some the internet archive version of Mucktopus' "how to tell a wunderpus from a mimic" page over in this thread yesterday:

Mimic or Wunderpus?

unfortunately the internet archive part is missing the pictures.

Anyway, if Thales says it's a wunderpus, that's probably more useful.
 
u probably should support "conventional" species, the ones that have been captive-bred, fishkid6692, instead of the rare ones like wunders and mimics. it'll also probably save u more on money in the long run.
 
once i get more experienced with cephs i think i may try it. money isn't the problem for me but i don't want to buy one just for my pleasure. if i were to get one i may even get a few and set up a breeding system for small egged species. can someone tell me how this could be done?
 
Thats the point, it seems beyond our capabilities at this time. Do some browsing on this forum and other regarding rearing free swimming larve in both fish and cephs - its not at all easy in either case, if its actually been done in captive systems at all.

I have access to free live foods that could be tried, but I don't want to do it, especially with wunderpus because of wild population issues and the fact that it would be incredibly labor intensive. If you really want to try it, try it with some other, not as endangered small egged species. If you could do that consistently and successfully, you might get some support here for trying it with wunderpus.

I understand the drive to want to try to breed them, but their declining wild populations and the difficulties raising the paralarvae make wunderpus a poor choice to learn on.
 
only problem with vulgaris is that i can't have multiple 200g tanks. how would i go about breeding an octopus? do i keep a few octos together?
 
i read somehere if ur gonna breed octos, put a male and a female (be sure) into a tank with a clear divider. the divider should have an opening in it just big enough for the male to get his modified third right arm through to mate.
 

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