Yes, I used to have a pet octopus. I never named him, but to some he was known as Octy. He died on the 13th of February, 2003. RIP | |
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 On the left is the octopus in his neutral colors. In the picture above he is wearing his hunting colors. While hunting his blue spot would flash fluorescent blue. |
 Above is a close up of his spot. Notice the blue ring does not connect at the bottom, this helps distinguish his species as Bimaculoides. On the right is a close up of his suckers. These felt really weird if you let him grab onto your finger. When he got a hold of you he liked to play tugowar. My friends were always very surprised at his strength, he could really give a good pull. |
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These are his camouflage colors. He isn't too hard to see in these pictures because he is cropped right in the center, but if you were scanning the whole tank trying to find him, he could be sitting right out in the open but your eye would pass right over him. I got pretty good at spotting him, but anyone else could look all day long and never find him. |
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This is where he lived. It was a 40 gallon breeder tank. On the back wall on the left is the input and output pipes of a Fluval canister filter. The filter contained three types of filtration: Mechanical: first the water passed through a sponge that filtered out any floating particals Chemical: next the water passed through bags of carbon dust which helped neutralize toxins in the water. Biological: finally the water passed through little rocks which cultured friendly bacteria that helped clean out toxins in the water. |
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The octopus liked to swim through the bubbles on the back wall. The bubbles are from an air pump which helped mix oxygen into the water so the ol octopus could breathe. To the right of the bubbles is a heater, and next is a water pump that helped circulate the water. The picture on the right is a pencil urchin, one of the octopus's tank mates. Notice the rock he is on is mostly covered with algae except right below him is a blank spot. That is where the urchin was sitting an hour ago. It slowly moved across the rocks and ate the algae (along with bits of the rock) and pooped out sand. The octopus' other tank mate was a starfish which most of the time was buried in the sand. It helped stir the sand and keep the tank healthy. There is a very limited list of suitable tank mates for an octopus. The octopus will eat any fish you put in the tank, and the octopus doesn't like strong lights so that rules out any corals or anemones. |  |
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This was the octopus' feed me stance. He would stick on the glass and make eye contact with you. If you moved your hand across the outside of the glass he would move around and follow you. He would also flash colors to get your attention. Mostly I fed the octopus pieces of fresh shrimp from the grocery store. He really liked live food though, so now and then I fed him live hermit crabs, and very rarely fish. They say fish are a bad diet but it was really cool to watch him wrestle a fish. He would have to catch the fish in open water at which point the fish would start squirming around and the octopus could do nothing but go along for the ride. The fish has a backbone, and the octopus has no bones, so in open water it has no leverage. But eventually the fish would get too close to a rock or a wall and once the octopus got a hold of something solid for leverage he would quickly overpower the fish. In the picture below he has caught himself a big black molly: |
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 This is the octopus performing his jet maneuver. He would shoot water with his siphon and propel himself like a torpedo across the tank. If you ever scared him by moving too quickly he would jet away and could cross the tank in a fraction of a second. He would also jet around just for fun too. |
This is the octopus performing his parachute maneuver. This was one of his methods for hunting hermit crabs. He would swim above them and then open up his arms and drop slowly like a parachute right on top of the crab. He would also do this to small rocks or shells as practice or because he thought he might get lucky and find something hiding under the rock.
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Click here for a movie of the octopus pouncing on a hermit crab.
He is just a baby in this movie and is barely bigger than the hermit crab's shell.
Notice he is showing his dark red hunting colors.
For endless amounts of information on octopuses (octopuses, not octopi because its roots are in Greek not Latin) visit www.TONMO.com