Found 3 mantis shrimps in less than 5 minutes and caught em!

[xclan]

Today I bought 20 lbs of rubble....i picked out all the rocks that had tons of life on them....very small pieces got a bunch of mushrooms....different things i am not familiar with.
and what appears to be about 20 baby baby feather dusters...{not astapias i hope?, doesnt look like astapias i have seen online but i am very new.}
Anyways i set the rock all in a 10 gallon tank with a filter and a fluorex light, I was admiring all the life when i saw a mantis shrimp running along the galss.
I remembered reading that if u dunk the rock in freshwater they will run out real quick....
Well I cheated and added Ice to the water {hope i dont kill the rock?} I dunked the piece of rock the shrimp was in for 5 seconds......then removed the rock....
I saw the shrimp running in circles like he was injured in the plastic container I dnked a few more rocks...maybe 33% of the rock I bought and got 3 mantis shrimps total. the larger one i quickly added to warm water to let him recover. I am not sure what to do with him.

Anyways. I am very new to this hobby but I can attest that ice cold water dip for a few seconds works very well.

 

[fishfreek]

Well if you want to keep the mantis you can. Some keep them. The only thing it keeps you from doing is basicly keeping any kind of snails or hermits in the tank. Depending on the type of mantis they could also turn preditory toward other things like fish.

 

[cj10488]

I kept mine.. Its kinda fun to watch them go after Stone Crabs that I have been catching as well.. POP theres another unlucky crab LMAO should have gotten into my REEF tank lol Or I tell my little girl If you talk back again I am going to stick you hand in the MANTIS tank lmao she stops real quick.. lol ...

HTH,
James

 

[xclan]

all together i found 6 mantis shrimps in 20 lbs of rock.
I got 4 baby starfish.
3 crabs.
numerous snails.
and some worms ewwwwwww.
got about 2 dozen mushrooms...very small but still alive and getting healthier i think.
oh but te bad news one rock has like 30 astapias on it...and its the best looking rock I got...
anyways all this for 1.xx a pound and i got to hand pick it...aint bad.....lots of coraline algae

ps. i got rid of all the mantis i could find. and have 6 peppermint shrimps in the tank to get rid of astapia.

 

[Bang Guy]

Are you sure they were Mantis? How large were they? I suppose it could happen but that's a LOT of Mantis for 20 pounds of rock.