Reef nutrition

Octopus chierchiae breeding!

[quote author=GreshamH link=topic=3925.msg46256#msg46256 date=1213809648]
You call those large eggs...coming out of that puny little thing? Dang, what size are small egg species, 50 microns :D
[/quote]

50 microns..hmmm.I could use that in my lab right now for a sample!
 
[quote author=Ibn link=topic=3925.msg46285#msg46285 date=1213816375]
See, you should have shown up to Rich's talk!
[/quote]

Seen it in Manhattan.... You could have seen it twice had you shown up :p
 
Yep, life span is about a year.

Found another baby tonight. :D

I am keeping them in plastic containers from Tap Plastics. I dremel out two holes on opposite sides and then super glue net from a net breeder in place. Then, I pop a hole in the lid and glue a piece of rigid tubing in place. The containers then go in a tank and are fed via an aqualifter and plastic gang valve, and the containers simply overflow into the tank. If I get a lot of babies, I'll feed the containers with a small power head and a manifold.

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Wowzers; stumbled on quite a few more hatchlings. Any ideas on the reason for the mortality rates yet?

As always, I'm amazed by how large of a prey these guys can consume.
 
No idea about the moralities. The last few, possibly because they are last. Also the female was small, so..

Some pics of hatchling # 1 eating a 'big' amphipod.

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:D

So, these occys have only one paper on them from around 1976. That paper says that they have a 4-7 day hatching period, but I have been getting hatchlings through day 16. Tonight, I fed the female a freshly dead 'shore' shrimp with tweezers (another difference from the '76 paper - the female is not supposed to feed through brooding), and she came mostly out of her barnacle den. While grabbing the tweezers, the den tipped over, and as she ate, she moved in such a way as to let me see inside of the den. Inside were at least 6 (maybe 9)mature eggs. You can clearly see the soon to hatch occy's inside the eggs. Super spiff!

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So are the baby's you have now going to be breading stock ? are you gona go full scale w/this and become a major/only supplier of these ? this has to be one of the coolest things I have seen in the hobby yet 8)
 
Some updates.
Total of 24 hatchlings over 26 days. Very strange that is. I was able to photograph the only inking so far which was a nice little pseudomorph. No eggs left and I will be mating the female to my other male this week.

The adult coloring is taking hold:

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