Mantis shrimp trap

[pham411]

i think i have a mantis in my tank!!! one of my cleaner shrimps have gone missing.... i think ive heard snapping in my tank but not sure. does ne1 have diy plans for a trap i can make. if the traps dont work then my last resort is removing my rockwork.

alohaz!

[Rob]

this seams to be a common DIY trap.
have never used one thankfully, but check it our.


http://www.seahorse.org/library/articles/DIY/diyMantisTrap.shtml

[pham411]

wow thats simple enough. i love diy with diagrams.

[Reefbaby]

Yeah...Rob's right. These bottle traps work pretty good. You catch a lot of other stuff too, like bristleworms!

However, my mantis never seemed to want to go into the bottle. He was too content to just sit in his little hole in the rock. I looked for him for at least 4 months before I was lucky enough to happen to get a glimpse of him! I heard him EVERY night after the lights went out, had several shrimp die, AND had 3 fish jump out the tank during the night - I think they got themselves freaked out and just went for an escape...didn't realize that they were going up and not down.:shock:

Catching the mantis turned out being an all day Saturday family event. I happened to see him sitting on the top of the rock towards the top of the aquarium. I immediately grabbed my husband and had him help me. He held the flashlight into the hole and I tried to irritate him enough to get him to come out of the hole...they can be quite aggresive when irritated. Sure enough, after about 30 minutes, he came almost completely out of the hole and I was ready with the scissors. Well, you know how we girls are....I screamed, dropped the scissors and the little mantis scurried off to find a new hole. Uigh! I couldn't believe it! I thought that we would certainly never see him again.:-x
Later that evening, I was walking by the tank and happened to see him again. This time my husband took over, we ripped the hole completely open - it wasn't hard, the mantis had burrowed a nice tunnel for himself - and when he came out to attack my husband, he cut him right in half!:o

Let it be said that this all happened when I was still a newbie to the hobby. I had only read and heard horribly horror stories about mantis shrimps. Needless to say, there are many hobbyist out there that would love to have mantis shrimps and that would give them a home. So, if you can catch yours alive and fawn it off onto someone else, it's certainly a more humane way of going about it!;)

Good luck!

[Rob]

OMG.. what a story....
that's great.... well not for the shrimp...

but yes, you bring up a great point.. there are Many people that look to get these for a species only tank, so if you get it, check with the locals, as I'm sure you will find someone that will take it off your hands..

they really are interesting creatures to watch. (from a distance...lol)

[Kassun]

pham411: to bad you live so far away, I have been looking into starting up a mantis tank for my down stairs office. Have you had a chance to take a pic of it yet?

-Kassun

[pham411]

pham411: to bad you live so far away, I have been looking into starting up a mantis tank for my down stairs office. Have you had a chance to take a pic of it yet?

-Kassun

nah i when i collected my LR from the beach i counted about 13 mantis shrimp in about 80lbs of live rock. i had no intentions of raising them. i did about 4 super high salinity dips for the rocks and that took care of some of the smaller mantises, unwanted crabs, slugs and cucumbers. i even left some of the rocks out to dry for about 20 mins to get the suckers out. that works so long as you cure your live rocks for about 3 weeks so that the amonia from the decaying animals on the rocks completely die off. i thought i took care of all the mantis shrimps but im guessing there may still be some left. not sure though. i will let you know if the bottle method works..