Oklahoma family whose pet octopus laid FIFTY eggs reveals how they’re looking after the consortium – including ingenious homemade aquariums

An Oklahoma family whose pet octopus laid 50 eggs has revealed how they care for the young with ingenious homemade aquariums.

Cameron Clifford, 36, and his wife bought Terrance, the sea creature, for their son Cal’s ninth birthday in October.

He found the female California twospot at a local aquarium after his son fell in love with them from the age of three.

Now the family has created their own system for caring for the babies, making “little octopus houses” from household materials until they are big enough to be moved.

In a video posted to the family’s TikTok known as doctoktopus, Cal was seen holding one of the babies in his hand as it spun around.

“Baby bimacs are exponentially more sensitive to water parameters than adults, especially temperature,” they explained in the video.

‘This makes transporting this size extremely risky, essentially a death sentence.’

In a separate shot, a large aquarium full of leaves, bright lights and containers with baby octopuses can be seen.

‘So it’s up to us to take care of them. We can do this,” the devoted father said as he showed his wife, whom he called his “sous vet,” how she carefully cleaned the glass of the aquarium.

While cleaning, Cameron showed off the makeshift setup the family has created as they take on their new roles as octopus caretakers.

When the father told his son they could order an octopus from a local aquarium store, Cal immediately burst into tears.

“His ultimate dream, his cloud nine, the greatest thing that could ever happen in anyone’s life, had just become a possibility, and he just broke down,” Cameron said.

“My friends and family, of course, as you can probably imagine, all said to me, ‘Well, now you have to get it for him.’ You can’t just dangle that in front of him and then turn around and just squash that dream,” the father added.

The father and son began preparing for the arrival of the pet octopus, while Cameron ordered a saltwater tank, water cycle system, and food supplies for Terrence, primarily through the Facebook marketplace. He thought it would cost about $600.

But what the family didn’t realize was that Terrence was actually a female, who started hatching “a chandelier” of tiny eggs two months after arriving.

Experts told him that the eggs were unfertilized and that the release of the eggs would only mean the end of the female octopus’ lifespan.

Until one evening in February, Clifford picked up an egg and was absolutely shocked.

“I accidentally dropped it, and this little droplet comes out and spreads out these little tentacles and makes three swims across my view,” he said.

Although it was a fun and interesting adventure, the father made it clear that they encountered problems along the way.

“At one point we ran out of little octopus houses,” Cameron said, showing off one of the babies in a “super hipster restaurant bottle” that latched onto the glass and moved up and down.

While the family arranged fifty separate homes for the unexpected offspring, they spent thousands of dollars on clams, crabs and snails, and had to cover the costs of repairing damage to their home from water spills and a small electrical fire.

Speaking of one particularly messy incident, Clifford said, “I wish I hadn’t opened that valve like that and dumped all that dirty seawater on my kids’ white carpet.”

“Don’t buy an octopus as a pet unless you’re ready to lose your children’s sleep and college money at the same time,” he said USATodayjokingly.

Meanwhile, the desperate father began calling aquariums and research facilities, begging them to take the babies from him.

“It’s a lot of work,” he said. ‘A lot of work and emotion and money and time.’

“I don’t know if we’re fully prepared for any of these challenges, but the hope is to accommodate as many as possible.”

In a video, Cameron said it takes about two to three hours a day to care for the babies and their mother.

“Although it was clear that statistically we would lose the most young in the coming weeks… we decided to enjoy the trip,” Cameron said.

The experience is overall joyful and rewarding, as he said, “It was an absolutely fun experience, not only for me, but for my children as well.”

Two months after hatching, half of the babies are still alive, an astonishingly higher survival rate than average.

“Every scientist I talk to is always somewhat amazed at the fact that we’ve been able to get such a high yield in the children’s bathroom,” he said.

And Terrence is still alive, Cameron said.

‘It goes well with her. She lives alone in her aquarium for the rest of her life. She will probably die in the next few weeks, even though my assumptions about her have been consistently wrong.”

The family has also become famous, as their page has amassed over 400,000 followers on TikTok.

“I think there are a lot of people who had a crazy dream as a child, but it disappeared when they got older,” he said.