Relaxxxxxxx tearing your tank apart is not going to help at all. It will only stress your octopus.
I understand how you feel though. The first octopus I ever orderd was from fishsupply.
Like you, I had orderd a O.bimaculoides.
When I got my shipment I could tell right away that I didn't not have a O. bimaculoides. I was a little peeved. So I called to complain.
Jack explained to me that he sells them under the same names they are sold to him as.
To be honest he didn't even know that bimaculoides had false eye spots at the time.
Well I was at first dissapointed to get a octopus that was not a bimac after hearing good things about them. This was at a time long before this forum ever started and before tonmos' time. The cephalopod page and ceph-list were the only resource available to me.
Well my new octopus was nocturnal, lived in the sand and I had no idea what it was. So I took some pictures and sent emails out to Dr Woods. Dr Caldwell, Dr.Cigliano, Dr Forsythe...
It soon became known that what I had was a very rare species of octopus called macropus. Macropus is in the family of long arm octopuses that are red with white spots. Now instead of feeling upset with fishsupply, I called back to thank them! From that point I have been best of friends with Jack and I was the one who helped teach him what O.bimaculoides looks like. He now keeps his eyes open for strange looking octopuses for me and some I have sent to researches for the good of science.
So who knows what you have, but rather than being bummed about it, enjoy and lets ID the beast and go from there. Who knows you might have a very rare specimen that is of interest to science. A reseacher would gladly pay you your cost if they had a interest and you will be part of a discovery that could help science!
What people need to understand is octopuses change shape,color and there are over 300 species of octopus and many more undiscoverd. It is hard enough for the serious ceph experts to ID any species with out knowing where it was collected from and a big stack of books and research papers to their side. The only species that any LFS can ID are bimacs because of the false eye spots.
We must remember that even bimacs can be tricky for the untrained when they are small and not flashing the eyespots.
Try and get some pics when the little monkey comes out of hiding and we will go from there.
Good Luck!
