2 Mantis found

[619DUSTY]

Today, I was doing a little cleaning and discovered a mantis (all yellow) in color that darted out from a hole in the LR, he is maybe 1.5" long. I was looking around to see where he darted to and discovered another, I noticed his eyes. The second one is a mottled grey and black and maybe an inch long. I was curious on the species and there temperment. I would love to snap a pic, but niether of the two will stay out of their holes long enough to snap one off. The tank (55gal) is been up and going for a month now and just introduced a cinn clown and a firefish as of today. Any thoughts on what I should do?

[Loverotties]

How big is your tank?It brought up a question to me.Can you have two in a small to medium tank or would they fight to death?

[619DUSTY]

55gal

[Zombo]

Odds are that they will eventually find each other and a fight will ensue. Someone will die, most likely.

[jenglish]

2 shrimp enter 1 shrimp leave... 2 shrimp enter 1 shrimp leave Thunder tank!!!!!


ok but all jokes aside I would try to catch one or both. Not knowing the species you don't know if they will get big enough to eat everything else in the tank.

Even unidentified you could get a fair price for either as they are always in demand.

[sks4613]

If you can catch an ship I'll buy the yellow for my 240.

[Zombo]

Yellow one is likely a P. ciliata ( a spearer mantis) the other could be a G. chiragra (smasher mantis). Go here for a great list of mantis shrimp for home aquaria

[tlgreve]

That sounds like it would be an interesting fight. smasher vs spearer! I think you should catch them though, they are such cool creatures!

[JessPete]

We had a rogue mantis in our 90G that we couldn't catch for over a year. It was impervious to both homemade and store bought traps. After losing a couple of small fish (open water swimmers and larger ones were ok) and not being able to maintain a clean up crew, I got fed up. I started feeding them frozen krill on a feeding stick. I just held it down near their hole and waited. Once they he got used to it, I stopped feeding him for a couple of weeks and tried the trap again. Caught him in three hours. I could tell he was hungry because he came out a lot more than usual and pranced around. Until you can catch them, keep them well fed and they'll probably leave your fish alone.