davelin315 June 30, 2014 June 30, 2014 Tried this about 4 years ago and decided to give it a whirl again. This is a video of one of the male octopuses I bought in a food market - learning about these guys is completely hit and miss - I do not have a firm identification of species and don't have an exact origin for them, although it's looking like it might be somewhere in South Korea now. Initially I thought they might be from the Sea of Japan from colder waters (around 50 degrees) but my latest thought is that they are from the intertidal zone in South Korea and have a temperature range of 55-80. There are currently 2 in my tank out of 3 that I purchased this last time. No idea on aggression towards others in this species, pretty much the only thing I know is that they are a large egg species. I have a couple of threads on these over on Tonmo.com if you want any other details about my trials with keeping them. http://youtu.be/cnO9_Awafmc
davelin315 June 30, 2014 Author June 30, 2014 Neat! Unfortunately, despite being neat, I have had what I will describe as a zero percent survival rate. I have had one that lived for about 4 months without ever eating, otherwise most died within a week or two. The shipping on these guys is very harsh and the number of drastic environmental changes they go through is probably pretty extreme.
Coral Hind June 30, 2014 June 30, 2014 Very cool! Keeping an octopus that I caught while diving is how I got into saltwater. It lived for about 2 1/2 years then laid eggs and died. What size tank are they in? What kind of lid do you have to keep them in?
davelin315 June 30, 2014 Author June 30, 2014 No lid right now, 90 gallon tank that had the lionfish is where they are. I have the threads on Tonmo detailing my efforts. http://www.tonmo.com/community/threads/asian-food-market-octos-take-2.17077/ and here http://www.tonmo.com/community/threads/rescued-an-octopus-from-an-asian-food-market-today.11865/ The first one is the more recent thread.
elbowdeep88 June 30, 2014 June 30, 2014 This is really interesting to me. Did some skimming through your old threads. Now that you are thinking warmer water could you try throwing in some misc inverts (crabs, hermits, snails, etc) to crawl around as natural prey? It looks like you got one to eat a (coctail?) shrimp once but I didn't see anything else on the feeding issue. I know a lot of reef industry florida divers offer octopus crabs for like .25ea.
ParrotFish June 30, 2014 June 30, 2014 There is a really informative cold water reefing community on facebook headed by Stu Wobbe who owns this I believe- http://www.coldwatermarineaquatics.com/ There is at least one person on there who has an octopus. These people, if not Stu may be able to help you
WheresTheReef July 1, 2014 July 1, 2014 Pretty cool. I hope you have success this time around. You might contact the people who kept the zoo's invert house and/or baltimore aquarium for any help. I would think that a tight fitting lid would be helpful to keep it from escaping.
davelin315 July 1, 2014 Author July 1, 2014 This is really interesting to me. Did some skimming through your old threads. Now that you are thinking warmer water could you try throwing in some misc inverts (crabs, hermits, snails, etc) to crawl around as natural prey? It looks like you got one to eat a (coctail?) shrimp once but I didn't see anything else on the feeding issue. I know a lot of reef industry florida divers offer octopus crabs for like .25ea. I keep periwinkles and clams in the system and also offer freshwater crabs. I have attempted to feed emerald crabs in the past as well but have not offered much in the way of the random crabs that some places offer. Typically the fiddler crabs are a good food source but i don't often see those. I have also been keeping crayfish in there minus one half of each pincer - they tend to live for 2-5 days in the system and I have found that they can live at times for up to 2 weeks in the saltwater in the rare cases. I would like to find some live shrimp but have never ordered the grass shrimp that you can find from some bait suppliers and the local markets that used to carry live Gulf Shrimp don't carry them any longer. The drawback for the bulk crabs is that the shipping tends to drive the price up significantly... There is a really informative cold water reefing community on facebook headed by Stu Wobbe who owns this I believe- http://www.coldwatermarineaquatics.com/ There is at least one person on there who has an octopus. These people, if not Stu may be able to help you I am fairly active over on Tonmo but will check it out. If this is the place that I am thinking of, the owner of the company caught a baby GPO at one point in time. Unfortunately, regardless of the community, the big problem is that these have yet to be identified in terms of species and there are no signs that would tell me if they are cold water or warm water other than trial and error absent a species profile. I have a lot of contacts as well in the industry but again, looks like no one other than food wholesales keeps these for any real amount of time (well, and me, but I am probably the big exception).
davelin315 July 1, 2014 Author July 1, 2014 Pretty cool. I hope you have success this time around. You might contact the people who kept the zoo's invert house and/or baltimore aquarium for any help. I would think that a tight fitting lid would be helpful to keep it from escaping. I have consulted with them in the past at the zoo as and can guarantee you my level of knowledge is on par with or greater than the staff in Baltimore... used to work with some of them when I ran the DC facility and there were really no ceph experts at either facility. That's not an attempt to say they don't know what they are doing, but many of the biologists were not invertebrate biologists but rather general marine biologists with little or no background in cephs. Plus, the extent of their ceph experience is with GPOs and very limited experience with nautilus (not even sure if they still have them - they were always at the top of the list for being removed as an exhibit and there was a time that I had to tell the keepers that there were eggs in the systems). Some octopuses are better escape artists than others but I can't currently keep the lid I fashioned on the tank as I have a chiller sitting on top of it, ghetto style... The drop in chiller I typically use in the sump of this system is in need of a coolant recharge so I stuck a flow through on top of the tank and it prevents the use of the lid. That said, the tank level is 2-3" below the eurobracing and I have not had any of these guys attempt to escape before by going vertical. Some octopus species are ill equipped to escape based on their arm strength, have yet to determine what these are like as I have yet to have a healthy specimen. I certainly will cover it if I determine that there is a danger for escape, but so far nothing would indicate that these are likely to leave the water... Knock on wood.
ParrotFish July 10, 2014 July 10, 2014 I have no idea what reminded me of this, but wanted to see how your new buddy was doing?
davelin315 July 10, 2014 Author July 10, 2014 Since posting I have lost three more in addition to the male featured above. I believe that I was on the right track with two of the last three (one male died pretty quickly after I bought three of me together) but then this happened...
davelin315 July 10, 2014 Author July 10, 2014 http://youtu.be/tVdSmkQcZwo The male decided to mate and looks like the stress from mating was too much for the female, which died the next morning... That led to this... http://youtu.be/0TM4yQr185Y The male was looking like the mating was too much for him as well and I expect that he is dead today. He was looking pretty much like it was his last day last night.
reeferindc July 11, 2014 July 11, 2014 I read someplace that Octos normally die after mating or giving birth and they typically live about 2 years.
gwweber July 11, 2014 July 11, 2014 I had a buddy in the keys had an octo, it was an escape artist. Finally got out a hole the size of a pen. Good size octo too.
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