Mantis Babies!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Sizemore]

It seems like I have an infestation of mantis babies :evil: !!!!! They seem bigger than pods, and look like they have mantis appendages :evil: ! They lack the stalked eyes, but I'm just not sure anymore. My wife said they were, and I dismissed it - told her they were just pods. But they are looking more and more mantis-like :evil: , feeding on peppermint shrimp fry. Now I'm getting a little concerned - what if they ARE mantis babies :evil: ? What if that mantis :evil: I exterminated early on had the last laugh :badgrin: and left millions of stomato-babies :evil: in there!?

Anyone ever hear of such a thing? Is it possible? Do I need to get my valuable animals out of that tank?

Working on getting pics............

 

[Krish]

Pics would definately help. Curt (Curtswearing) will be a good person to talk to and hopefully he'll chime in once you post up some pics. He actually has a mantis shrimp workshop going on here on the forum

 

[Curtswearing]

Hakuna matata....it means, "No worries".

Even if you managed to set up a new tank with a pregnant female mantis, it's still nothing to worry about. All animals, with the exception of humans, have built-in population controls. If these babies had eye-stalks, and were, in fact, mantis babies.....you should know that the babies are cannibals. As soon as the food sources start getting low, the population will get real low real quick.

But, your babies don't have eye-stalks and I would be shocked if they were mantis. Even if they were, I wouldn't panic to remove valuable animals. Many Damsels, many maroon clowns, etc. are a LOT more dangerous to a reef tank than the typical hitchhiking mantis.

 

[Juanfer]

I have the same animals in my tank and I had never have any trouble in my reef.

 

[Curtswearing]

More than likely, what you are seeing are mysid shrimp which are very tiny even when full grown.

As opposed to a mantis which get much larger

Even Dr. Caldwell cannot keep his babies alive for long before the mantis babies start eating each other. There just isn't enough natural food in an aquarium to stop them from cannibalising.

 

[burning2nd]

cool beans good info

 

[Maxx]

Curt,
IIRC, mantis shrimp go through a larval stage that few aquarists are equipped to bring them through.

Am I remembering this correctly or not?

Nick

 

[Curtswearing]

Curt,
IIRC, mantis shrimp go through a larval stage that few aquarists are equipped to bring them through.

Am I remembering this correctly or not?

Nick

You're remembering it right. The first stage is larval. Heck, they look tough even then. Check this picture out. http://www.imagequest3d.com/pages/current/pictureoftheweek/stomatopod/stomatopod.htm You can see the development progression here. http://www.imagequest3d.com/cgi-bin...=0&search=stomatopod&cat=aquatic&tt=&bool=and

Most larvae won't survive the protein skimmer in most reef tanks, or will starve, or will be cannibalised.

Your best bet if you have a female carrying eggs would be to move that specimen to an unskimmed species-only tank. If you have them in a species-only tank, you can pull them through the larval stage but you're soon to have a LOT of work to do. You need a whole bunch of small separate containers, each with an air bubbler. Then you need to separate them into these containers without killing them. Then you need to take care of their dietary needs and do a waterchange in each container daily.

Dr. Roy has a good thread on it but I can't find it because I REFUSE to donate to the site the thread is on. The next time, I'm up in the middle of the night, I'll find it.

BTW, to get an idea of size, here are some mantis photographed through the eye of a needle.

 

[Boomer]

What you have are mysid shrimp, as Curt has suggested

 

[Curtswearing]

That's an awesome pic Boomer.

Thanks

 

[Sizemore]

Still working on pics to show you, but that doen't look like what I've got. They don't have the stalked eyes, like I said, but the 'forearms' - the appendages are clearly developed... It's difficult to see, but maybe lack the characteristic "shrimp"-tail.

I swear, people, I'm trying to get pictures, but these f*ck*rs are hard to capture on film...

 

[sandlot13]

tagging along! i doubt they are mantis larvae, but it would be cool to see what they really are!

 

[Curtswearing]

I found a couple of Dr. Roy's comments regarding rearing mantis.

It has only been done a few times with gonodactylids and with great difficulty. The larvae spend a month in the plankton and are very cannibalistic, so you have to separate them. Food needs to be varied and initially small such as rotifers and copepods, As they get larger, you can move to small artemia, mysids, etc. The only times I've done it I added an additive such as Selco to the food and changed the water daily. It is a lot of work for very little return. Our last attempt yielded 2 postlarvae out of 100 larvae that we started with. Other species with longer larval stages are even more difficult.

When discussing the mantis with longer larval stages, some of them are over a year.

So, even if you did have mantis babies, you aren't going to have any problems.

Neogonodactylus wennerae larvae go through 3 molts while with the mother. During this time they live on stored yolk. When they molt the fourth larval stage, they leave the mother's cavity (because they are attracted to the light) and enter the plankton where they will remain for at least a month molting another 4 times and growing to around 8 mm. The last larvall molt occurs while they are still planktonic and postlarvae (clear, mini-adults) settle and enter cracks and crevices on the reef. If postlarvae enter an aquarius system, they can survive and florish. However, it will be 15-18 months before they are large enought to breed (around 25-30 mm). The problem rearing larvae is that they are cannibalistic and require a mixed diet of plankton. We have occasionally been ablte to rear them, but under very special conditions with one to a cup, water changed daily, special food, etc. I have never seen gonodactylid larvae survive in an aquarium for longer than 3 or 4 days and usually they are dead in 2.

 

[jesseb]

Perhaps an amphipod?

http://www.noc.soton.ac.uk/GDD/BP/pictures/pardalisca.jpg