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The Mantis Shrimp Guide Thread


travisurfer

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Thank! Hope it is, sounds like the will stay small.

 

 

Wennerae I think. And I'm pretty sure I spelled it wrong.

 

Silly names.

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NirvanaandTool
Wennerae I think. And I'm pretty sure I spelled it wrong.

 

Silly names.

 

Nope you spelled it right. That's my guess too.

I've learned all the right spelling for the common species. Seriously getting addicted to these things. Already have 2 species and working on my 3rd species now. :lol:

 

Thank! Hope it is, sounds like the will stay small.

 

Awesome mantis. Glad you are enjoying him or her.

Here's the info on the species if we ID'd it right.

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/arthropoda/cr...name=n_wennerae

 

If it is a N. Wennerae, it will stay small.

I'd stop feeding guppies, they arent the best meal to be giving to a sw animal. Stick to hard shelled prey like snails and hermit grabs. A guppy or ghost shrimp gut loaded with good nutrient rich food every now and then is fine but dont make it a staple of their diet.

Pick up some market shrimp for the bulk of his diet, my two love it. My Viridis isnt too fond of scallops though but my Chiragra goes nuts over them.

Edited by NirvanaandTool
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Nope you spelled it right. That's my guess too.

I've learned all the right spelling for the common species. Seriously getting addicted to these things. Already have 2 species and working on my 3rd species now. :lol:

 

 

 

Awesome mantis. Glad you are enjoying him or her.

Here's the info on the species if we ID'd it right.

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/arthropoda/cr...name=n_wennerae

 

If it is a N. Wennerae, it will stay small.

I'd stop feeding guppies, they arent the best meal to be giving to a sw animal. Stick to hard shelled prey like snails and hermit grabs. A guppy or ghost shrimp gut loaded with good nutrient rich food every now and then is fine but dont make it a staple of their diet.

Pick up some market shrimp for the bulk of his diet, my two love it. My Viridis isnt too fond of scallops though but my Chiragra goes nuts over them.

 

 

Thanks for the info. I will get some shrimp this weekend then. And throw in a couple of hermits, maybe it will pay more attention to them. :)

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NirvanaandTool

Probably will if it gets hungry. My viridis would take one or two if it was desperate but would much rather have to work less and just take food off the feeding stick. Lazy little dude lol

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  • 3 weeks later...

I am happy to announce here at NR that I am the proud new father of a 2.5" G. Ternantensis! Woo! Months and months in the waiting and hunting. Now to train him to come out and say hi more often then a tiny antenna poke outside his hole for a squid snatch.

 

And to finish my 40B build or him!

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I'm slowly getting him adjusted to me with skewers and selcon soaked krill in my temp 14G while the 40B is in the works. As soon as I get the damn chance I'll get some pics for you all.

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  • 1 month later...

All the videos that you see of the Mantis Shrimp on the internet are them killing (violently) other creatures in a very "closed" environment. I also noticed that many of the pictures in here show empty shells of creatures that died most likely for kiddy entertainment. My personal opinion is that many mantis keepers (evidenced by the poor quality of their tanks) are more into the bloodsport then the true beauty of a reef aquarium.

 

Of course any idiot can maintain a mantis shrimp. However, a true balanced reef tank is much more of an undertaking. I think the videos help to hurt the mantis as well. All the bloodsport stuff leads people to believe that they are just cold blooded killers; thus, when they are seen in the tank the first reaction is: kill the bastard.

 

 

Lastly, I do like how the original author fed the mantis dead shrimp on a stick (although there were empty shells in his pictures too). Ironic how the author talks about the humane treatment of mantis shrimp, but completely neglects the snails and crabs that are ritually sacrificed for amusement.

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This has to be one of the most moronic hippy posts I have ever seen.

 

WOE IS ME WHAT ABOUT THE PODS YOUR CORALS ARE EATING. THEY HAVE FEELINGS TOO! OH GNOES. MY PHYTO IS CRYING AS IT DIES TO FILTER FEEDERS! BLOOODDDSPOOORRTTTTT!

 

You obviously know nothing about the mantis to make such idiotic comments.

 

wtf.

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Yeah, what he said^

 

Let us know how that vegan diet goes for your reef.

 

 

I own two pitbulls, and have to deal with enough crap from people who see morons like Michael Vick in the news and assume that everyone with a pitbull is a heartless animal abuser. It's not like just because I own pitbulls that I go to the pound, adopt strays, and feed my dogs puppies and film it to post on youtube. They eat the same mass produced high quality kibble that you feed your rescued greyhounds (but oh no, horses in Mexico and kangaroos in Australia end up in dog food!).

 

Just so you have an idea of what kind of person owns something like a mantis, I rescued my two pits from a hick town in Georgia- where they almost certainly would have been used for broodstock and fighting until an early and painful death. Now they're so spoiled that they whine unless they get covered by blankets every night.

 

Don't insult us with your "people who own xxxx are a bunch of cavemen" crap- because people who say that kind of stuff usually have no idea what they're talking about.

 

Next time you pick up clams on a half shell, frozen krill, mysis or any other meaty food from your LFS, tell the guy at the register how you hate him for supporting the painful death of thousands of animals in his freezers... Right before you hand him the cash.

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NirvanaandTool

Seriously? Why are you crying cause people feed live prey to their mantis shrimp?

People do the same thing to predatory fish - there is no difference. A snail to a mantis shrimp or a ghost shrimp to a lionfish, is there really a difference?

 

The main reason people give inverts to their mantis shrimp is to work their rapts (if they dont use them they lose them) and to give them a balanced diet. A diet just of frozen krill or shrimp pales in comparison to a diet of actual live prey.

But we are so cruel. Those poor snails. How could I put them in to clean my tank! They could get eaten!

 

People think mantis shrimp are cold blooded killers because of the stories about them on reefkeeping sites not because of Youtube videos. If you watch Youtube videos, you will see how intellegent they are and how they are efficiently skilled hunters.

 

Yea we must know nothing about real reef tanks .... Considering most of us manage to keep coral with our mantis shrimp. But make a blanket statement about how mantis shrimp are so easy to keep.

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Its just on the internet you see stuff like:

 

Mantis vs. branded shrimp

 

ultimate fight night and video.

 

you don't see this for other species. I do not feed any "live" animals to my fish. I'm not saying that everyone is making sport of the shrimp feeding; but it does give a negative impression.

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I don't know if this is a backpeddle or you just failed hard at what you were trying to say the first time, but either way...

 

I feed my mantis fiddler crabs once every 2 weeks or so as a treat. It keeps him healthy. He beats them to death, just like those fight videos.

 

Mantis shrimp do that in the wild. It's their nature. They do not have science labs to find ways to kill their prey with kindness, or at least painlessly. Nature is nature.

 

It is not possible for you to have a reef tank, without somehow supporting or directly killing, something to feed something else. Your reef tank is blood sport.

 

It does not matter what live food someone uses to feed their mantis. If it eats it normally, it will eat it in a tank, and it is natural for it to do so. No one is feeding infant children to their mantis. No one is training a vegetarian mantis to kill another mantis for gambling sport in a ring. It is UNHEALTHY for a mantis to NOT have live prey on a semi regular basis. Anyone NOT doing so is abusing their poor pet.

 

Those 'fight' video's you see of a mantis kiling some other fish or crustacean is food for the mantis, it's a bonus to owners mantis are fun to watch eat. Next you will ##### about people who hand feed their tame fish. "It's not natural for a human hand to be in the water getting cleaned by that cleaner shrimp!"

 

Your attempted justification makes you sound like a moron, or 12 years old. Both common on the intarwebnets, and forums in general. Just go away please and ask a copepod for forgiveness, because you are directly killing them right now as I type this in your unnatural glass cage prison, I mean tank.

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Yo Mind-

 

I've been trying to stock my mantis tank with natural prey items... So far I have the typical snail/hermit CUC, plus some "common shore shrimp" from ReefCleaners and some peppermint shrimp. I've been weary to put any crabs in because I don't want them to catch the mantis during a molt or anything... The weineraee (sp?) is smaller than my pinky finger so I worry about him. Haha. Any suggestions on feeding stock?

 

Think of it like the lion's den at the zoo- I'm trying to stock it with gazelles and zebras... instead of just offering a plate of meat every day.

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NirvanaandTool

So you've never fed live prey to any fish? No live blackworms, brine shrimp, mysis shrimp or anything else? Maybe you dont but what do you think is fed to your clownfish when they are captive raised by ORA or other breeders. Live food.

 

Yea those videos are online. It's not bloodsport. It's showing an animal hunt.

Maybe the titles arent the best. When I filmed my G. Viridis killing a ghost shrimp I titled it as G. Viridis HUNTING a ghost shrimp not VS a Ghost Shrimp.

 

Like everyone else said, mantis shrimp need this hunting. We are going to continue to feed live prey to our stomatopods so get used to it.

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kgoldy, if your Wennerae is smaller then your pinky finger I would stick with the small snails and hermits and small shrimps. Vary the types of snails as well. I put as many types as I can get away with for the tank. I.e. I get dwarf ceriths, normal ceriths, astrea, trochus, a turbo or two (because they are too big to get killed! hah) etc, etc.

 

You might be able to find tiny fiddlers for live food also. My mantis is about 3 inches long maybe and he can EASILY take out a full grown uber fiddler male. So picking a fiddler the same size as your mantis or smaller is fine. He will thwap it to death quickly and if he doesn't kill it within an hour or two you can trap it back out.

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The only fiddlers I have ever seen are cold water ones used for fishing here in NY... And it's been quite a while since I've even seen those. Where can I get tropical fiddlers online?

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Nope, since I can get them at a local LFS I just buy and drop in tank. Crabs are a lot more complex then brine or ghost shrimp and you shouldn't need to gut load them. Of course it won't hurt.

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