if i were to describe an animal that sleeps all day and incredibly active at night you would
probably assume it's one of my monsters but it's not now i never thought that i would literally
change my sleeping patterns and sleeping schedule for a fish well not your typical fish but a fish
it goes in a fish tank it's 4 30 in the morning
and i've realized this is when my octopus this is when my pet octopus
likes to eat gotta kind of put it up to its tentacles
grab it pull it in isn't that awesome
good morning up first thing in the morning to feed my pet octopus and to tell you this story and to
finally answer most of you of what happened to your octopus and the story that i'm going to
tell you is likely not what you were expecting let me recap first i've been wanting to keep octopus
for a long time and for obvious reasons this is an incredibly interesting animal highly intelligent
and it would just be absolutely just captivating and they truly are but we'll get to that in
a second i decided i would build them custom aquariums that were octopus proof or should i
say i consciously built these aquariums knowing that an octopus could potentially escape and i
need to act on that before an octopus can actually go in the aquarium if their beak can get through
it their whole body can get through it the beak is an interesting thing as well because it's the
only way you can tell the age of some species of octopus and you do it post-mortem of course
in order to measure it and or i believe you might even be able to see and i haven't looked into this
because i'm not interested in dissecting an octopus but i believe it's almost like a tree
rings where you can count rings or something like that on the beak maybe somebody in the comments
will know uh specifically but the downside to that is you never know how old the octopus
actually is and because of that it's kind of a sad story because these species of or more
most species of octopus only live for one to two years and they might already be halfway through or
they might even be in their dying face so when i got these guys and i added them to the aquariums
i added them into these little boxes the first thing i need to do is make sure they would uh
survive the acclimation they came from a very long shipment over 24 hours if i remember correctly
and upon adding them to their uh containers they were active and moving around so i
had hope 24 hours later i released them too it was 24 48 hours this was a couple months
ago by the way a lot of the stuff that i show you on super advanced things i make sure that
uh it's presented in a responsible way as opposed to just jumping on video and look what i got look
what i got i know it appears that way but i've had these guys for a couple months and you only seen
these videos a couple weeks ago or a week ago or something like that they made it through the first
couple of days and they were still alive they were hiding and when an octopus hides especially this
species which is the atlantic white spot which is a true nocturnal species and i should say
that i was gonna go with a common octopus which is technically considered a daytime octopus which
means it will be out and about all day long it will interact with you it will interact with its
environment and you can play with it type of thing but i thought something a little more advanced
would be far more fascinating and interesting and ins and it would take me away and every
all of you guys away from glorifying octopus keeping and focusing more so on their needs and
responsibilities that you have as their caretaker which this video is going to highlight beautifully
i added in um live crabs into their tanks and i'm not a huge fan of feeding live but in order
to get an animal to eat especially once you first get it one of the keys to survival is making sure
that it actually eats and a lot of times when you have a wild octopus they don't know what pellets
are or you know maybe they'll eat them but i tried uh crabs and those crabs were still in the tanks
two or three days later i decided maybe they can't find them maybe they're just too scared
maybe they're hiding it could maybe be a lot of things but i couldn't tell if the octopus
were even alive because they were constantly hiding so i did remove almost everything from
their aquariums including the shark eggs from this one and they went in the sump at the time
and the tower came out the tower had to come out because it weighs about 80 pounds and it was on a
pile of rocks now it's down to one rock and a cave system but in order to get them to eat in order to
monitor them in order to have a closer look i felt like this was needed and this species of octopus
will hide in the sand it technically doesn't need much more than sand
as soon as i did that they ate i did have to coax a little one to eat as well like i said
the downside to these guys is they are a larger species their mantle which is their heads gets
up to about the size of a children's football which is about eight inches
and then their tentacles can grow up to another three or four feet long this is a medium-sized
species of octopus probably considered small in the ocean but in terms of aquarium keeping
heck i would even call it large i can't feed these guys live crabs forever but i was elated
to know that they are eating i immediately switched them and started trying to feed them
fresh foods live foods they would eat even with the lights on so it's like okay it is a nocturnal
species but when you're hungry you're hungry it doesn't matter what time it is heck i wake up at
two o'clock in the morning and want a hamburger sometimes maybe these guys will do the same
that's not what happened they wouldn't eat this guy was supposed to be for a friend and i almost
gave it to him uh gave her to him who has a really large reef tank that is super excited about it
i was supposed to get it nice and healthy get it eating and then give it to him
i think that's that's the responsible thing to do but then it stopped eating completely
just drawing out the time i decided i'm gonna have to start feeding these guys in the middle of the
night i thought let's do an experiment i'll wake up at 4 30 in the morning and see if they'll eat
lo and behold they started eating but i cannot wake up at 4 30 in the morning every day i thought
let's trick them 4 30 today 5 o'clock the next day 5 30 the next day and slowly progressively get to
a reasonable time hoping to get them to 7 a.m it worked i got them eating at 7 00 a.m but one day
uh i didn't get out here in time until i think it was about nine o'clock and the big one ate but
the little one didn't and then it didn't eat the next day and the next day and i realized
i have to restart the cycle i have to go back to 4 30. what happened that about 4 30. it ate
for almost two months now i've been doing this i've got them to the point now where they'll
eat at around seven eight nine o'clock in the morning no problem but i put in so much time
and i'm not complaining because here here's one of the things that i like i know i got to get up
at 4 30 in the morning so it helps me get to sleep a little earlier at night knowing i've got to be
a responsible father to my octopi babies uh so i've got to make sure that i go not only to bed
but i look forward to getting up at 4 30 sometimes because i come out here and it's just so serene
everybody's quiet everybody's and i'm having such an intimate experience with these guys and
knowing that i'm i'm a father of two children and i remember what it's like to get up in the morning
and at first you know in the middle of the night in bottle feed and that intimate moment and it
silly as it sounds it's a very similar experience it's to the point where i don't want to give up
either one of them i want to keep them both i feel like
so attached to them especially the big one who i feel like we've this is so weird we've connected
and we know each other and we and she trusts me i don't trust her why don't i trust her and why do
i feed with tongs the little one discovered that i taste delicious uh i first tried it on my friends
to see if it would bite them i'm like yeah just put your hand in i tried it with tamara as well
just go and pet them and put your hand in and they just bite them and she draws blood so i tried it
and i was like okay i'm one with the animals i will try it no she bit me too i'm not trying it
with big mama it doesn't technically have a name and that's the first time i called her big mama
so that's not going to be is big mama her name now so i'm not going to try it with big mama
big mama it's just so fascinating the way they eat though and you offer them a piece of food
they feel it with their tentacles and that's really all you have to do you just have to brush
it up against their tentacles and they feel it immediately they know it's food they grab onto it
and then rest of their body immediately latches onto it and they have this webbing in between
their legs that's right under the mantle and they bring it up into there and they they kind of just
walk off with their food and become little mush balls and turn almost white camouflaging
with the sand i'm thinking about putting in darker sand in one of these tanks and seeing
if they color contrast or not however with that said my friend knows that the octopus was for them
they showed a tremendous amount of interest and excitement over the sharks and i thought you know
i personally wanted to do this again i personally wanted to keep sharks grow them out hatch them and
all of that sort of thing and even though we did it before we weren't able to get them past
you know a few weeks past hatching although we did get them eating and and that sort
of thing and it was such a fascinating and exciting experience so what i've decided to do
is uh for the time being he's gonna he's going to take the sharks the shark eggs and he's going
to have fun with them and experience that side of things uh likely take footage for me doesn't
want to be on camera and i'll be able to share it with you guys here eventually um as for the
octopus he does have another he still thinks it's his and uh and i'm just gonna add this in real
quick i never planned for the little girl to have problems with feeding or anything like that but i
put myself in a bit of a predicament supposed to have one octopus here and the sharks there
but i also don't want to hand over an octopus that's frail but the sharks also can't stay in
that tank and there's nowhere else for them to go things just technically didn't go to plan um
it wasn't my intention to end up with just two octopus but and i know some people would
be disappointed about the shark eggs and whatnot uh and you know i am as well but when the camera
shuts off it doesn't my fish don't care how many subscribers or how many views we get and
as ungrateful as that sounds which i'm i'm totally not it's
it's really too difficult to be a hobbyist and a youtuber at the
same time and to make decisions and to just justify everything and to show everything etc
um but i think you guys get it i think you guys are mature enough to know that you know
uh not everything goes to plan all the time so what are the real plans for the future i mean
obviously first and foremost keep these guys eating keep them healthy do whatever it takes
i i do plan to keep this i do plan to keep big mama in this aquarium until she
i don't think she's gonna outgrow it even though it's a larger species based on their
activity and whatnot i just can't see her outgrowing it i do plan to put the
um the tower back in shortly maybe in a couple of weeks or something i do want her to put on some
size they do have to eat every day sometimes twice a day these uh octopus if you don't know a lot of
the species can eat up to four percent of their body weight every single day and four percent
two percent of that goes to their uh growth they grow two percent a day which is crazy
fifty in two months they double in size or triple in size so i'm excited about that i
guess that's it there's not enough else to say i mean i i feed them in the middle of the night and
now i get to feed them during the day and that's it most of the days they hide they do grace me
with beauty and it's very special every once in a while where they will come out and explore
can you even see it like that's what i'm saying you see her right there she will come out go
have a closer look this one hides under this rock behind it so that's been fun there she is big mama
now her mantle she controls how big it is but sometimes she makes it really really big her
mantel right now is about the size of a large thumb she's definitely a foot long
it just doesn't seem that way i use a wide angle lens for the most part when i film and it's tough
to gauge size of these animals just absolutely fascinating her house is under this rock but she
also likes to eat in here and sometimes she'll go up into the overflow behind it and stuff herself
behind it if she wants to hide um look at the substrate how it's kind of clumped up that only
happened once she was in there i wonder if that's like octopus p and it's like kitty litter to them
has anybody ever seen that before clumping like that anyways
she's doing fantastic i can't wait to experience more see her mantle's already getting bigger i
can't wait to experience more of this with you guys just be warned um these are an
incredibly advanced animal uh and i proceed with caution if you do decide to get one