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Aquariums, Fish and Other Aquatic Animals

I have set up and maintained scores of aquariums, freshwater and marine, of all habitat types, in my life, for myself, friends, pet shops and other businesses. I have kept all kinds of fish and aquatic reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates.

I had a very special relationship with one exceptional aquatic individual, similar to the kind of relationship one might have with a dog or cat. This was Doheny, an octopus. I mention him on the About Me page, but I’d like to tell you about our relationship here. Just for a little fun and, hopefully, eye-opening education about these amazing creatures.

If you have aquariums, of any type, that require maintenance while you’re away, contact me.

My Octopus, Doheny

I’m not exactly sure how I became so fascinated with octopuses. I think it started when I was in elementary school in the mid-to-late 1960s. Every year, my father would teach a junior high biology class in summer school, and I would accompany him and his students on field trips to Doheny Beach at Dana Point. There were some really nice tidepools there. They would search the tidepools and my father would tell them all about the different kinds of animals. I loved being there with my dad and the older kids. One of the cool girls told me she liked him because he was so “sciencey”. She said everybody liked my dad. And that was really saying something, as these were the kids who hadn’t done very well in the regular school year, often for behavioral reasons, so were forced to go to summer school. A guy wearing James Dean clothes said there was always a scramble at sign-up day to get into my dad’s class.

This was my first experience having actual contact with living octopuses. The deliberate way they moved, their apparent tactics in trying to avoid detection and capture, and, especially, their eyes, those eyes that were looking at you, as if trying to figure you out – it was just so mesmerizing. They seemed so, well, smart. I had never imagined such a thing from seeing them in books, TV or movies. In those media, they were just squirmy things related to snails and slugs. But here, in the tidepools, in front of me, they were vibrantly alive, dynamic and calculating.

I read anything I could find on octopuses. When we went to Marineland, I watched the octopus while the rest of the family went to feed the seals or see the dolphin show. Around 1968 or so, my favorite band, the Beatles, came out with their song, Octopus’s Garden. I loved that song and found myself listening to it in my head all the time. I decided I wanted to keep an octopus as a pet. A friend of mine had a big brother who referred me to a local aquarium shop that specialized in marine aquariums. I began frequenting the shop, and the owner taught me all about marine aquariums. I had set up little tropical fish aquariums in my bedroom before, with pretty fish from the pet store. But in 1970, when I was in the 9th grade and about 14-15, I set up my first marine aquarium. Back then, we didn’t have all the fancy equipment available to marine aquarium enthusiasts today, which keep the water chemistry just right, remove harmful biological byproducts and contaminants, etc. It required a lot of constant attention, testing and work to keep the water clean and chemically correct. But I had my goal to keep an octopus, so I learned what to do, and I did it.

Unlike most marine aquariums people set up, for beautiful tropical marine fish, I didn’t need a heater, because this was a cool-water, California coastal habitat marine aquarium. In fact, I was worried about whether the air conditioning system in our new home would sufficiently cool my upstairs bedroom in order to keep the water at a low enough temperature. I didn’t know how warm the water could get and still be tolerable for the octopus. I asked my parents to lower the thermostat to 70 degrees, but my financially responsible and frugal father just couldn’t bring himself to do that. But he did lend me the money to buy a small room air conditioner to put in my window, so I could control the temperature just in there. What a great dad. I don’t remember if I ever paid him back, though. I feel guilty now remembering that.

I landscaped the tank with rocks from the tidepools. After I had the aquarium all set up, I collected a couple of fish from the tidepools and put them in the aquarium. I don’t really remember, but I think they were grunions, because there was a “grunion run” the night before, and there were always stragglers who didn’t make it back out with the tide. Their purpose was, quite frankly, to eat and poop, so that I could gradually develop the bacterial population in the filter medium and bottom sand that would facilitate the nitrogen cycle (part of the process to keep the water healthy). I would still have to do constant water testing and partial water changes, but this was an important step. Once I was satisfied that I had a stable system, I headed back to the tidepools to collect an octopus. I have to say, my father was very tolerant of my obsession. He was the one who had to drive me back and forth to Doheny Beach while I was working on this project. I suppose he was grateful that I was only doing something just a little weird, rather than the kind of trouble my unique mind could have been getting me into.

I searched for a small octopus. I wanted the youngest one I could find, since I knew they only lived one to two years. While I searched, I also collected several small crabs, which would serve as an initial food supply for the octopus. They were prey that it was used to hunting. I did find a nice little octopus, put him in my collecting jar, and we headed home. I knew he was a male, since I saw that he had a hectocotylus. My father had pointed out to his students, and me, that male octopuses have this feature. A hectocotylus is an arm that is used for mating. The other arms have suckers all the way to the tip, but the hectocotylus arm has no suckers for much of the lower length. On the way home, I tried to think of a name for my octopus. My father suggested that I just name him after the beach where he was collected. I was surprised (but shouldn’t have been) at my dad’s genius. What a totally cool name: Doheny.

Doheny was a California two-spot, or bimac, octopus (Octopus bimaculoides). They seemed to be the most common species along our coast. My father had pointed out the ocellus, or false eye, a blue spot on each side under the eye. My father wanted to know why I had set up an entire aquarium, just for one octopus, with no fish or other residents. “What are you going to do with it?” he asked. “I’m going to get to know him,” was my reply. My father just shrugged, “OK, good,” and kept on driving. He knew how “different” his kid was. At first, Doheny had been moving around the jar, trying to find a way out. But after a while, he settled down on the bottom, his arms folded under and around him. He just stared at me all the way home. He was looking directly at my eyes. It was fascinating, if a little uncomfortable.

When we got home, I ran upstairs and put the jars with Doheny and the crabs into the aquarium to let the temperature equalize. After a while, I opened the crab jar and slowly let the water mix, then let them swim to the bottom. They looked healthy and immediately scurried into the rocks. Doheny was moving actively around in his jar, obviously wanting out. I opened the jar, and he immediately jetted to the bottom and hid in a cave I had created for him. I covered the tank with its secure lid (I had learned about what escape artists octopuses are) and left him alone to relax and start getting used to his new home.

When I came back upstairs an hour or so later to check on him, I discovered some crab shell litter on the sand. Apparently, Doheny was settling in just fine. He had already had his first meal in his new home. Maybe he had just been really hungry when I collected him, interrupting his hunting. Anyway, I took it as a good sign. Doheny was in his cave. I had arranged the rocks so that there were actually a couple of places Doheny could hide and feel safe, both of them positioned so that I could see into them. He had adjusted his skin color and texture to try to match that of the rock. I wondered if it made Doheny uncomfortable that he knew I could always see him. I wondered if my behavior caused him to suspect that I could detect him, even when camouflaged, better than other animals with which he was familiar. We stared at each other for a while. Then I went over to my desk to do some homework. Doheny couldn’t see me there from his cave.

After I had been working for a little while, I looked over at the aquarium. Doheny had come out of his cave and was sitting on the sand beside the rocks, looking at me. I turned my chair so that I could look directly at him. When I did, he raised up a little and his color got a little darker. It was obvious that he was reacting to me looking at him. He was acutely aware of me observing him, from all the way across the room. That was a very clear demonstration of awareness and interest, not to mention, fantastic visual acuity. I wondered if he understood, or was able to visually detect somehow, that there was no water outside his tank. My head was just full of questions about him. How was I going to be able to find the answers?

I just sat still and looked at him. After a few minutes, he slowly crept around one of the rocks, behind it, and peeked over it, to continue watching me. Had I made him nervous? He apparently felt more comfortable partially hidden, but still wanted to maintain eye contact. I moved a little, shifting my position a bit, in response to his move, then continued to sit still and look at him. In a little while, he raised up a bit, so more of his head was exposed above the rock. Then, after another couple minutes, he moved back in front of the rock and sat, with his tentacles just moving around slightly. His body color looked like it was undergoing very slight lightening and darkening. Was he trying to communicate something to me, or just a little nervous? I knew that octopuses used their colors to communicate with each other, but, at the time, there wasn’t much known about what the signals meant. And, of course, I had found no information to indicate whether anyone had ever experimented with human-octopus communication. I thought it seemed remarkable that, after only a few hours out of the ocean, in a tank of water, in a strange environment, with a strange creature, he seemed to be so interactive with me. Had he already figured out that I wasn’t a threat? Or was he trying to figure it out? This was fascinating.

Pretty soon, Doheny moved over to the tank wall and climbed up to the top of the tank. He started moving along the top edge, carefully and methodically feeling, above the water line, along the seam between the tank rim and the lid. He was obviously looking for a way out. He apparently felt comfortable enough with my presence to come out in the open, exposing himself, to do this searching. That was encouraging. Unlike lower-functioning animals, even those supposedly much higher than him on the evolutionary scale, which would remain fearful and hidden for a much longer time, he seemed to have actually reasoned, based on my behavior, that he could risk this.

His desire to escape and find his way back to his tidepool environment was natural, and Doheny was doing an admirable job of systematically looking for a flaw in his imprisoning enclosure, not just haphazardly scurrying around, as most other animals would. But I had to wonder what he would do if he did find a way out. If he stuck an arm or two out and felt that they were in air rather than water, would he go on out anyway? Two-spot octopuses aren’t afraid of leaving the water for periods of time. They do it all the time in their natural tidepool environment, to move from one pool to another, or to get from an evaporating pool back to the sea. So I thought Doheny probably would leave the tank quite readily. I had heard of other instances where octopuses had escaped their tanks, resulting in them drying up in a corner somewhere. I didn’t know if Doheny could “plan ahead” based on circumstances, but, even if he could, there was no way he could know the circumstances. This was all new and strange to him. If he got out, failed to find the ocean and began to suffer, would he think to return to the aquarium, and, if he did, would he be able to find his way back? I had to assume, probably not. If he got out during a time when I was away, it could mean disaster for him.

I was confident that Doheny, at his current size, didn’t have the strength to dislodge my tight-fitting tank lid. But, as he grew larger, he might be able to do it. I decided to just keep an eye on him for the time being and, whenever I was gone, to leave some heavy books on top of the tank, just for insurance. Maybe, with time, Doheny would become comfortable in his aquarium and enjoy life with me. That was my hope, anyway. I planned on interacting with him as much as possible and entertaining him by giving him all kinds of puzzles to try and see how well, how fast and how much he could learn. I was also planning on being generous with gifts of live crabs, shrimp and fish, rather than stuff from the grocery store seafood counter. It was going to cost me more, and my dad already thought I was going overboard on all this. But I had my sympathetic owner/friend at the aquarium shop, who had agreed to order “feeder” fish and shrimp, and sometimes crabs, for me, and sell them to me at the cheaper rate she used with her larger-scale customers, since I was sort of a regular around the store and she liked me. I was a cute kid, and the kind of animal nerd, with a few bucks in his pocket, that pet/fish shop owners like to see coming.

After Doheny had finished exploring the tank rim, he moved around the tank, exploring his environment. The aquarium was fairly roomy. It was a 30-gallon tank. I had never before set up such a large aquarium. I had landscaped it with a lot of rock, on a sandy bottom. Everything had been collected from the tidepools. Some of the rocks had various types of algae growing on them. I didn’t know everything about all the characteristics of light, as I do now, but I had good, bright, full-spectrum fluorescent lights on the tank, that the aquarium shop owner had told me were the “very best”. She made a lot of money off of me, but her advice was always good, and she helped me a lot. So, the algae continued to grow. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the algae helped a little to keep the aquarium water healthy, by using some of the nitrogen waste compounds to grow. Anyway, the tank was attractive and the landscape was useful and “homey” for Doheny.

Over the course of the first week or so, Doheny and I would watch each other through the glass. He was becoming increasingly comfortable with me. He had finished eating the crabs I had initially added to the aquarium, so I brought home a couple feeder shrimp from the aquarium store. I held the bag next to the tank, so that Doheny could see the shrimp. He got really excited. He was right against the glass moving back and forth, with his arms moving all over the glass, trying to get to the shrimp. I held the bag right next to my face. I wanted him to associate this treat with me. I removed the tank lid scooped the shrimp out of the bag with a net and held them over the water. Doheny had moved up the tank wall and was just beneath the surface, waiting. I dropped the shrimp into the water, and he jetted after one and caught it, then raced into his cave to enjoy his meal. After a while, when he was finished, he hunted down the second shrimp and had his second helping of lunch. I remained close to the tank, watching him, and he was watching me. I would continue to feed him this way, reinforcing the fact that good things came from me.

I realized that it was going to be inconvenient having to run back and forth from the aquarium store for Doheny’s food every couple of days. So I set up a little “holding” tank. I would then buy enough shrimp/crabs/fish to last for a week. Doheny was very observant. Whenever he saw me go to the holding tank, he got very excited and would crawl and jet around in front of the glass in expectation of being fed. I noticed that Doheny would sometimes sit at the glass, watching the feeder animals in the holding tank, some five feet away from his tank. I thought maybe this was sort of distracting, maybe even a little torturous for him. So I put up a barrier beside the holding tank, so Doheny couldn’t see it. But he still knew it was there. I was amazed when he apparently began to “tell” me when he was hungry and wanted to eat. Wherever I was in my room, he would come to the glass wall closest to me and move around, trying to get my attention. When I came over, he would jet over to the wall closest to the holding tank and crawl around on it. Then he would jet back over to me, then back to the other wall. He would do this several times, until I went over to the holding tank and got him a feeder. He was actually communicating his desires to me.

I decided to try offering him a feeder by hand, to see if he was comfortable enough to take if from me. As usual, Doheny was waiting just beneath the surface. I thought he might be suspicious of this at first, and retreat from me. But, to my surprise, when I held the crab at the surface of the water, Doheny immediately snatched it from my fingers. The first few times I fed him this way, he went back down to his cave to eat. But one time, after he took a shrimp from me, he stayed at the surface to eat, and actually held onto my finger with one arm while he ate. I wasn’t sure if he was showing thanks or affection, or if maybe he thought that if he held me there, I might have a second shrimp for him. Either way, it was a remarkable show of the significant personal connection we were forming. This kind of physical contact would increase over time and move beyond feeding-related situations.

Within the first three weeks, Doheny and I were “playing” through the glass. He’d come right up against it, and I’d put my face and hand against my side. I’d move back and forth, and he’d follow. I’d tap on the glass with my finger, which seemed to excite him. He acted as if he’d like to get to it through the glass. So, I decided to start taking off the top cover and offer my finger to him, to see what he’d do. He again surprised me by extending three arms out of the water and taking hold of my finger, with no hesitation whatsoever. Apparently, once he had initially decided that I wasn’t a threat and was, in fact, a source of food and entertainment, he felt no apprehension about any kind of activity with me. Every behavior he had shown right from the beginning made me think that he was incredibly intelligent, with the ability to quickly assess circumstances, make decisions and alter his behavior accordingly. He was actually reasoning.

When I told my father about everything that was happening and what I thought, he seemed skeptical, but genuinely interested. So, I invited him up to my room to observe Doheny. “I guess I should see what kind of results my investment is producing,” he said, with a smile. When we entered my room, Doheny was surprised to see my father, a new, unfamiliar figure in the room. He retreated to his cave. But, after a couple days of bringing dad up to my room and the two of us interacting in front of the aquarium, and, especially me feeding Doheny with my dad present, Doheny began to feel comfortable and accepted my father’s presence. I showed my father how Doheny and I played and how he took food from my fingers. He was impressed, and told me so. But what really impressed him was the day that we were both at the aquarium wall and Doheny was interacting with me. Then, he moved over in front of my father and attempted to interact with him. Doheny had accepted a second person and was trying to see if he could interact with him as well. My father really looked happy about that. Eventually, Doheny would come to have physical contact and take food from my dad as well. My father was only up in my room occasionally, like maybe once a week, but Doheny always remembered him and would interact with him as if he had just seen him a few hours ago.

Doheny was obviously a highly intelligent, reasoning being. As such, he got bored. When I hadn’t been there for a while, as during a day at school, Doheny would be very excited and animated, jetting all over the tank, when I arrived back in my room. He would come up to the top of the tank, waiting for attention. He would hold onto my hand, and wouldn’t let go. I was feeling really guilty that he wasn’t getting the mental stimulation he needed. I had tried a few mentally-challenging games with him, such as putting a crab in an old prescription bottle to see if he would figure out how to get it, which he did pretty quickly, pulling off the lid to get the crab. But it was obvious that I needed to do more mentally stimulating things with Doheny. So I went to pet shops, toy stores, drug stores, hardware stores, etc., to look for any kind of items I could use as toys, or with which I could make puzzles, etc., to keep Doheny entertained.

I won’t go into everything I did here, but there were a couple of things that Doheny really liked. He liked balls and other items that floated. He would take them to the bottom of the tank and let them go. He liked watching them “jet” back to the surface. Sometimes, after he let them go, he would try to catch them before they could reach the surface. He also liked “motorized” or wind-up kids’ toys that moved on or through the water. Such things would keep him mostly entertained while I was gone. He also liked the various puzzle contraptions I would buy or make myself out of plexiglass, from which he had to retrieve his food treats.

However, what he always wanted most was contact with me. We would spend hours with me just sitting beside the tank, with my hand in the water, and Doheny massaging me with his suckers or me rubbing his body. He especially liked to be rubbed between his eyes. Sometimes, he’d “rassle” with my hand, with his body colors and patterns rapidly changing.

Doheny exhibited behaviors that indicated he had an understanding of what I was probably thinking and, so, what I was going to do. As I would later learn, that’s called theory of mind, and it’s a very advanced characteristic of highly intelligent species. I learned how to tell what Doheny was feeling from the colors, patterns and textures he produced with his skin, in addition to his movements and body positions. I’ve included some photos of two-spot octopuses here to show how variable their colors and skin textures can be. This story is getting pretty long, so, I won’t go into all that here either. I’ll just end by saying that I had a wonderful, revelatory, life-changing relationship with this intelligent, reasoning, emotional being for about a little over two years, until he finally passed away, which was almost as awful for me as losing a dog. I’ve always thought it is sad that such intelligent beings live such short lives. It doesn’t seem fair.

Doheny was another perfect example of my concept of levels of potential. In the wild, octopuses aren’t social animals, although recent study has indicated that they’re sometimes a little more so that was thought. But, in captivity, they can form highly social, close, affectionate relationships with their human owners. They are truly amazing animals. Decades after my experience with Doheny, I was thrilled to see, on PBS, the Nature feature, Octopus: Making Contact. It’s about an Alaskan professor who did the same thing I did. He set up a tank in his living room, where he and his daughter also had a wonderful relationship with an octopus. His was a different species, from the Mediterranean, a day octopus (Octopus cyanea), and it was a female, named Heidi. But their experience appeared virtually the same as mine. The interactions between them and their octopus weren’t all the same as mine, e.g., Doheny never squirted water at me, as Heidi did, etc. But that documentary brought back wonderful memories of Doheny, and my dad, which I hadn’t thought much about in years. I’ve always regretted that, as a kid, I wasn’t thinking about documenting all my experiences with animals, so don’t have any photos of Doheny. It was just lucky that my parents and friends sometimes took photos of me and some of my other animals.

I encourage you to watch this Nature documentary. You can sign up online with PBS and have access to all the great shows they produce.

So, next time you’re at an aquarium, skip the shark tank and go to the octopus tank instead. Look into those eyes, and you’ll see the intelligence and the soul. Those eyes are looking as intently at you as you are at them.