Headless_donkey Posted July 31, 2007 Share Posted July 31, 2007 I thought I would start a thread about Stomatopods aka Mantis shrimp. Here are some cool links: Identification of species http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/arthropoda/cr...traca/royslist/ Tons of good Information and some Mantis fiction! http://www.blueboard.com/mantis/ Mantis and bioluminescence http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/release...14_shrimp.shtml Mantis blog http://www.extelligence.org/blog/index.php...=19&paged=2 YouTube search for Mantis Shrimp http://www.youtube.com/results?search_quer...imp&search= Please feel free to add to this list. I know some of you have experience keeping stomatopods. (looking in your direction Captain Bob) As I find more neat info on these amazing creatures I will post it here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thedude Posted July 31, 2007 Share Posted July 31, 2007 About time you posted this Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Truck0000 Posted July 31, 2007 Share Posted July 31, 2007 About time you posted this Nice videos. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CaptainBob Posted August 1, 2007 Share Posted August 1, 2007 good idea, if anyone has any specific mantis questions, I'll be happy to answer them. I have experience with many different species of both smashers and spearers, and I'm happy to help with any questions you may have. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Headless_donkey Posted August 1, 2007 Author Share Posted August 1, 2007 I have a question Captain Bob. Have you ever had a specie of mantis that burrow rather then piled rock? If so, how much substrate did you have to give it? How often and what do you feed mantis? We feed about once or twice a week. We very the diet between silver sides, krill, clams on the half shell(thanks john), and snails. We tried to feed him a damsel, but now they sleep together. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CaptainBob Posted August 1, 2007 Share Posted August 1, 2007 I do have a burrowing mantis, actually only recently brought him home, but my rule of thumb with any burrowing creature is to give them as deep substrate as the creature is long, so my 4" L. maculata has 4" of substrate, his burrow seems sufficient for him at this depth. So far he's only taken one meal, a small blue damsel, but he's new, I'm sure I'll have him eating silversides a few times a week on the same schedule as my G. chiragra(Roy's pictures do this species no justice whatsoever) before too long, The chiragra is a smasher, and so has a more complicated diet, he gets krill, silversides, occasionally live ghost shrimp, and every now and again he kills hermit crabs or snails when he feels like exerting himself. I usually know when this happens because it takes him the better part of a day to break and eat one. He's also been given the novelty of chasing a small platy around untill the condy anemone he shares his tank with snagged it... of course my Chi-Chi, ever the benevolent dictator, punched the crap out of the offending tentacle and claimed his immobilized prize... that was actually very cool to watch. about your mantis with his pet damsel... the mantis may just not be hungry enough to look at the fish and think of it as food, don't feed him for 2 weeks and that damsel is as good as bait, I can assure you of that. Bear in mind, many mantis species are known to bury their kills to save for later snacking, sort of like crocodilians, and big cats do. Yours probably just knows the damsel isn't going anywhere, and is likely saving him for a "rainy" day That's really the biggest misconception about mantis shrimp, aren't psycho bloodthirsty killers... just some of species, like my chiragra and most O. scyllarus are more prone to that kind of behavior... Which I honestly think is one of the most interesting qualities in the species that exhibit it. But any of them are capable of killing a soft bodied creature several times their size if they're hungry enough. They also don't eat coral, or actively rip apart coral heads, as some old salty reefers might lead you to believe. Like any mobile tank inhabitant, they might snatch food away from a coral you're trying to feed, and smashers will bust open tubeworms to get to the tasty morsels inside, which may wind up causing some incidental damage to nearby coral heads, most colonies will recover from such superficial damage without issue. The most dangerous thing they can do in a reef tank is move your corals, which may mean just pushing one out of the rockwork sending it tumbling to the bottom of your reef, with a lot of soft corals this isn't a terribly big deal, but I wouldn't risk any nice stony colonies to the mercy of a mantis' landscaping masterpiece. Some of these quirks manifest themselves in very cool ways though, ChiChi likes to have a door in front of his little house he's built himself out of LR rubble, so he very carefully and methodically tears sheets of green film algae off of the tank walls, since his tank gets cleaned on the days I get home from work and really feel like cleaning another tank he has plenty of crap growing in there to choose from, and he makes doors and curtains out of it, it lasts untill the current pulls the film apart, then he makes a new door/curtain.. he also uses a clamshell on one of his entrances, before he built the house he used to sit on the clamshell balanced on his telson just watching everything that happened in my room, which was actually marginally creepy, especially when he'd stare at me while I was trying to get to sleep. it's unbelievably hard to rest when you know a very intelligent 3" superpredator is glaring at you all night in more spectrums than us humans can physically perceive. But not all stomatopods have this kind of personality, Sam at Aquatek has a little O. Haveninsis named Liza Rose who she describes as being bubbly. My ChiChi built himself a dark tower overlooking "his" anemone, her Liza Rose built herself a cute little house with a ricordea for a door and a little garden of polyps she neatly lined up to one side of her door on the sandbed; bear in mind, this little in-tank garden is the mantis' handiwork, not Sam's. Like I said, some individuals do some really really cool stuff once they get comfortable. I hope my anecdotal rambling has answered your questions, and hopefully given you some new ones. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Headless_donkey Posted August 1, 2007 Author Share Posted August 1, 2007 That is AWESOME. Thanks for the reply! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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