Octopus

My first was 7 months, the last only 4 months. The first was near adult and the second was fully grown. The problem is they are hardly caught in their young stages. If you were lucky to get a juvenile you'd probably see a year or more. Problem is all the good home aquaria species are warm water which = faster metabolism. Coldwater species like the giant pacific octopus and O. vulgaris live up to 5 years, but are too big for anything but public aquaria. All in all, if your somewhat interested...give it a try. After the octo passes you can move on if you don't feel it was worth your time. I never thought I'd be as hooked as I was before I purchased my first.
 
I had a common octopus 25 years ago and experienced an almost identical scenario.

The female holds the sperm packet in her mantle after mating until water conditions are optimal then breaks it and fertilizes her eggs. Which is why she was able to lay fertilized eggs in the tank without a male present. The male dies shortly after mating and the female dies shortly after the eggs hatch out. All of the smaller octopi do this. The larger octopi don't die after the eggs hatch and have much longer lifespans.

In my case, the babies were too small (about the size of a dime from tentacle tip to tip) to eat adult brine shrimp. I didn't know about mysis at the time and my brine shrimp eggs failed to hatch in time.

Greatest experience I ever had in 35 years of keeping aquariums.

Just FYI, the tank mine was in didn't have any fancy gear. It only had a glass top with crushed coral, an inert rock cave, and an UGF with two powerheads. You don't need a lot of gear to keep them. Also, I only did monthly water changes back then.

pam916 said:
Years ago I bought an octopus and put it in my home tank and I liked it so much I decided to go back and purchase the other one the lfs had for sale. They immediately inked each other and poluted the tank and both died. Then I decided to try again a couple of years later and I bought a really cute pygmy octopus, it was white and would suddenly turn red. I had it for a couple of weeks and it then went into hiding under a piece of coral in a small cave. I came home one evening and turned on the lights and low and behold there were tons of tiny octopus all over the tank. I didn't know what to feed them so I called the local zoo aquarium to ask their advice and they had no idea, but the supervisor wanted to come to my house to see them. Not knowing how to feed them, they all died and after having babies the mom octopus died. After that I gave up on keeping octopus. The good news was that it landed me a job as the keeper of the marine section at the Fort Worth Zoo Aquarium, which was a lot of fun.
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How big did you vulgaris get nolapete? Any pics from it? Im curious about one, setting up a new tank that is. No way it would fit in the 29. Another tidbit I forgot to mention that has been floating around is keeping the carribean/hatian species at lower temps to prolong their life. 72ish instead of the 76-78 that was recommended to me. I personally only kept mine at 76, I wonder if it would help to keep the temp around low 70s for the smaller species.
 
She was 30" or so and kept in a 30 show 24x12x24. They don't need a lot of space. She never tried to escape which I attribute to the tall tank. This was 25 years ago, so I don't recall what the temp was. I don't think I had a heater in her tank though.

She would spread out on the front glass when I entered the room and hid in her cave when anyone else did.

She looked like one of those 60's ceramic suns with the face on them because she'd turn her mantle to face out.

I remember she liked when I played Van Halen because she'd move back and forth across the glass like she was dancing.

Wish I had video of her.
 
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