At the Tropical Aquaculture Lab in Ruskin, we’ve been running into lots of bottlenecks in the early larval development of some of the Rising Tide species we’ve been working on.  We believe these issues were exacerbated due to our current larval rearing systems being inadequate to provide the pristine water quality necessary for larvae to survive.  Because of this, we’ve spent the past several months upgrading our facilities, to what we believe will be an important step toward significant advancements in captive raised marine ornamentals. Figure 2. 22 day old common octopus paralarvae Upon nearing completion of the new system, we were approached by Mote Marine Laboratory’s cephalopod specialist Brian Siegel; their common octopus (Octopus vulgaris) had spawned, and they were curious if we would be interested at giving them a go.  Rising Tide’s focus is primarily on the captive propagation of marine fish species, but we thought this would be a great way to test out our new larval rearing system.  Common octopi have been reared in captivity at several institutions around the world, but with MORE: Something A Little Different…