how to trap mantis shrimp?

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leesanhua

Aquarium Advice Freak
Joined
Oct 3, 2003
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kansas
how should i do that? tank now is ready to stock. ammonia = 0. nitrite = 0. PH =7.3.

but the mantis makes me crazy..... any advice? thks in advance
 
They do sell traps, i have never needed to trap a mantis so i dont know how well they work may wait for someone else to respond.

BTW 7.3 ph is way to low that should be up around 8-8.3
 
Just brought my first two fish home and found a mantis

I'm not too horrified as I have had this tank up since right after Christmas and after I placed in the rock I had been doing a lot of studying on the subject of mantis shrimp.

In my case the rock was Keys and Live Base Rock from liverocks.com. It is absolutely beautiful. I added another 30lbs of base rock from hirocks.com and I cycled with a shrimp.

All this time I was aquascaping, testing water and searching for the pistols or mantis. I did find one tiny mantis in one of the bags the rock was in so I knew there likely could be more. He was very small though. I never saw any pistols but half hoped that was the 'clicker' in the tank.

Yesterday I brought two healthy clowns home and they are quite happy thus far. But last night as I'm watching, there it is, first time I've seen him, a mantis on the sand at the base of a rock in a little burrow ! I'll get him. I'm not going to lose sleep over him just yet. I picked up two crabs from my rock and he hasn't gotten them yet. The clowns swim high and so they aren't near the entrance to the little killer's burrow.

The trap method I'm going to stick with is the water bottle with top cut and placed in backward. I'm going to bait him with a wafer in the bottle and place it near his burrow. When I first set the tank up I tried this but I didn't know where to place the trap. Now that I've seen him (and I'm hoping he hasn't moved, I have read they are smart devlish buggers) I'm going to place the trap very near his burrow.

I'm hoping if he gets anyone he gets one of my crabs :) When I saw him last night I could not tell if his appendage was that of a spear or smasher. The way I identified him was his eyes. Nothing like those high set praying mantis like eyes.

It was so odd. I'm kneeling looking in and thinking, is that a mantis ? and then he backed in his burrow. I then took the flashlight and shined in and sure enough, it is a mantis. he backing up further in so I suppose my one problem now may be that he moves on and I have to find him again.

I don't get the feeling he ventures out often if ever. Not sure how he is surviving but I get the feeling he stays in the rock all the time. If I have to I'll pull the base rock this burrow is under. :-(

I read an article in a San Francisco newspaper about how mantis plague the public aquariums out there. We need a natural predator other than the trigger.

By the way, the clowns are everything I hoped for. The camraderie between the two is really cool. I'm liking the clowns big time.
 
first of all, my english is not as good as you guys so .. i can only briefly tell what i did last night.
i put a cup with bait (shrimp). sat the cup like 30 degree angle and put it near to the rock that he might be able to jump or claw in. hoping that once the mantis shrimp get in and won't be able to get out. i was thinking the cup might be too slippery for him to claw out. so... i been waiting and waiting him for more than 1 hours!!! FINALLY!! he somehow jump into the cup BUT!!! only seconds.. he got out! i was so pis......s.....!!! so i set the cup to 45 degree and went to bed. (can't stand it anymore,too sleepy)
the next day i woke up... shrimp in the cup was gone!!
so... please please.. can anyone help?
 
Here's a thought. If you knwo what rock he is hiding in, pull the rock out and put it in a bucket. Then dump some soda water over the rock (or use a spray bottle if you know exactl where he is) and the shrimp will jump out and into whatever container is below the rock. I've heard ppl use this method as a solution.

Another thought would be maybe you could even use a turkey baster (here's a photo since you're english isnt so great photo ) and squirt some soda water into the burrow he's hiding to coax him out. Once you have him out of his hole you could use something like a gravel vac to siphon him out. It could work. :D :D
 
If you are able to remove the exact rock that you know the mantis is in, you can simply plunge that rock up an down in a bucket of normal tank water. He'll jump out. This will do less damage to other life on the rock than any kind of soda water or FW.

Leesanhua..what you made was an effective crab trap, but it won't work on a mantis because they are good swimmers. Crabs can't swim, so they can't get out.

It is unlikely that the mantis you have is a spearer type. We mostly see smashers. It is also unlikely that your clown fish are in any immediate danger. I would say that crabs, hermit crabs and snails are the most likely prey until your mantis gets larger and bolder.
 
well... when i try to pick of the rock that he is hiding... he moved to another and another. so...
any other method that i can use?
thanks.
 
Really...jumping from rock to rock? He's very bold. Normally, they "hole up" when threatened.

Keep trying. You will get him.

If you can't even get him inside a rock, then I would resort to some sort fo commercial mantis trap.
 
I just ordered the X-terminator mantis trap I will let you know how it works when I recieve it. I will also post a product review on it.
 
Seems I saw somebody from liverocks.com posting that the keys/gulf mantis shrimp are much less malevolent than the fiji ones. He said Mike even hand feeds his, and they're scared of fish.
 
My mantis came in with LR.com rock. The mantis attacked a goby that I introduced (pick on the new guy syndrome). The mantis wasn't able to kill the fish, but he definately wanted to.

Now that mantis lives in his own tank and is a great pet.
 
My mantis came in with LR.com rock. The mantis attacked a goby that I introduced (pick on the new guy syndrome). The mantis wasn't able to kill the fish, but he definately wanted to.
well that certainly deflates the "tame keys mantis shrimp" theory. Heh... I've yet to see a mantis shrimp, but I have to admit I wouldn't mind getting one, if just for the curiosity. I used to have a spiny reef lobster, very pretty, purple tail, orange body, red spines, and he ate many gobies, shrimp, snails, etc. How much worse than that are mantis shrimp?
 
can i use FW instead of soda? wht's the differences between them? which one is better? i mean least damage to the rock...
 
Just use regular tank salt water. If you can get the rock he is in...out of the tank and into a bucket...the rest is easy.

My mantis jumped out simply by plunging the rock in and out of the water a few times. No need to use anything harsh like FW or soda.

If he is really stubborn, strap a piece of shrimp to something heavy and put it in the bottom of the bucket so that the mantis will have to swim out of the rock. While he's struggling to remove the food from the rock, pull his home rock out of the bucket.
 
I took the rocks and they are currently in a bucket with water from the tank. will this be ok? I will be placing a powerhead to keep the water flow. still trying to find the rock wher the mantis is at..
 
The Stomatopod aka. "Mantis Shrimp"

zuzecawi said:
How much worse than that are mantis shrimp?

If they are agressive enough, they will break the glass of their aquarium. The strike of an adault California species has been tested and found to be equal to a .22 cal bullet.

This article lists their strike speed at 75 feet/sec....that is 51.44 mph 8O

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/04/21_shrimp.shtml

My brother-in-law has a lfs he goes to in VA Beach, VA. They had a mantis shrimp in a display case for a while. They ended up removing it after it cracked the glass on it's 3rd aquarium. He said the owners of the store told him that people would come in and tap on the glass. This was a VERY aggressive mantis and it took glass-tapping as a personal challenge. It would come straight at the glass and start beating it.


Here is a GREAT site all about mantis....

http://www.blueboard.com/mantis/intro/special.htm
 
NewFishGuy said:
The Stomatopod aka. "Mantis Shrimp"


My brother-in-law has a lfs he goes to in VA Beach, VA. They had a mantis shrimp in a display case for a while. They ended up removing it after it cracked the glass on it's 3rd aquarium. He said the owners of the store told him that people would come in and tap on the glass. This was a VERY aggressive mantis and it took glass-tapping as a personal challenge. It would come straight at the glass and start beating it.


which shop in va beach?
 
I'd heard about the glass cracking but thought it was a urban legend... wow, that's impressive! (or terrifying) I think you've convinced me to do the rock dunk and see if I've got any of them. I feel bad killing anything I don't plan on eating, but I don't feel bad feeding it to something else!!! Would eels/triggers/lionfish eat a mantis shrimp?
btw, I have never heard of these critters until recently, why the sudden pop up of them? Environmental change? Increased importation?
 
Aqualis said:
which shop in va beach?

Can't remember the name of it....He bought a house in Suffolk off of 664 about a year ago and still goes to Va Beach for his lfs.....he took me to 3-4 this last weekend when I was up there. The mantis was gone, but it was still a pretty nice store. I'll find out the name of it for ya.
 
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