|
Their ability to escape causes their early demise very often in captivity but in the wild it saves them almost constantly. They are forever getting stranded in tidal pools and if they couldn't crawl out and quickly make their way back to open water, then they would be in big trouble.
They have an interesting life cycle. Both sexes die shortly after reproduction. Males can live a few months after mating. Females live just long enough to see their eggs hatch. Once they mate, they will never eat again. The hatching babies are near microscopic and in fact are part of what makes up "plankton". They can produce up to an estimated 100,000 babies at a time. I don't think it's very feasable to try and reproduce them in captivity. Feeding plankton isn't even the issue. Afterall, sea monkeys thrive and all they are is plankton (brine shrimp). Octopi go down fairly deep to breed and brood ...something like 50 to 3 or 400 feet deep range I think. I don't remember the deep end of the range but I'm fairly sure they will breed at about 50 feet for the shallow end of the range so even to cover the minimum range you would have to have a fairly massive tank to breed them. If you keep individuals that never breed, the most you can keep them alive is about 5 years. Generally though they rarely survive past a couple of years.
Hey wrasse..your little buddy didn't happen to have little blue circles all over when he got mad did he? lol.
|
