So today I was adding some LR to my sump and i had some left over so i decided to add the remains to my DT. About 2 hours later i was looking at my tank and i saw something small and brown about a inch long swim out of a rock. i knew right away what it was. heres some pics of what it took to get him out.....
Hey..... thats a mantis shrimp
- Thread starter outlazz
- Start date
dcantucson
Reef pro
I think you must have gotten lucky catching him. I have heard nightmarish stories.
yote
In Memoriam
I'd say you got EXTREMELY lucky to catch that mantis that quick.:mrgreen:
They can be a hell of a challenge to catch out of a reef tank.
They can be a hell of a challenge to catch out of a reef tank.
Bifferwine
I am a girl
Yote would know -- he's a pro mantis hunter on the side.
dcantucson
Reef pro
..........and he's certified. :lol:
the worst part of the whole incident was that about 15 min after i first saw him i trapped him in a net but he swam out :frustrat: so it took the rest of the night to catch him again. still not sure how it got into the tank i knew it had to be from a new rock but i had them in a spare tank for over a month and dipped them all before putting them in my DT. at least i got him
yote
In Memoriam
I found my last mantis about 6 months after adding the last rock I bought.Their secretive animals and can go for a long time without being noticed in a reef tank.
The last one I had,finally got himself caught when I was feeding the fish one evening.He came running out of the rock to snatch a bite of mysis shrimp.If he hadnt of,I never would have known he was in there.
The last one I had,finally got himself caught when I was feeding the fish one evening.He came running out of the rock to snatch a bite of mysis shrimp.If he hadnt of,I never would have known he was in there.
Chris_150G
Reefing newb
Heres a mantis shrimp article that is pretty cool.
The mantis shrimp peers with orange eyes and probing antennae. Her red forearm is in its up, locked position
The sun lights the shallow seafloor off the coast of Bali. About 10 yards (10 m) down, an emerald-green body roams the bottom with blue eyestalks extended and green antennae waving. The hungry peacock mantis shrimp spots prey; she cocks her red, hammer-like forelimb — ready.
A small, creamy, brown-spotted snail (confident within his thick spiral shell) inches along the seafloor in his slow-one-footed way. The predator closes fast, and hovers above the snail. The mantis shrimp (who isn't a shrimp) releases her spring-loaded hammer-like claw; it flashes forward — too fast to see — in an underhand blow that smashes the snail's shell with a loud bang.
The black circle indicates the location of the mantis shrimp's special saddle spring, limb lock, and limb hinge. The mantis shrimp's two eyes gaze out at the top of the picture. Her long, hammer-like claw swings forward, breaking glass in Caldwell's aquarium.
The speed of the strike (up to 50 mph, or 23 m/s) creates cavitation bubbles between the shrimp's hammer-like heel and the struck snail. The bubbles collapse, and generate heat, light, and sound. The shell shatters with a flash too-fast-to-see, and a bang. Watch the flash (called shrimpoluminescence for another species) in the video, slowed by a factor of 900. (Courtesy of Sheila Patek, Wyatt Korff and Roy Caldwell/UC Berkeley) Though the mantis shrimp's tough heel is impregnated with hard minerals, still she must shed the pitted, damaged surface every few months, and grow new heel armor.
A mantis shrimp (more elegantly known as a stomatopod) can break aquarium glass.
"There are a half dozen species capable of breaking a standard glass aquarium," says biologist Roy Caldwell a professor at the University of California at Berkeley. Including, of course, the peacock mantis, which gets about 7 inches (17 cm) long.
Caldwell, S.N. Patek and W.L. Korff discovered how the mantis shrimp generates such powerful blows. It isn't muscle power alone. In fact, the mantis shrimp (a crustacean, distantly related to lobsters, crabs and shrimp) needs 470,000 watts of power per kilogram of muscle to do the job — orders of magnitude higher than the fastest-moving muscles can deliver. The creature's weapon needs much energy delivered fast.
So, how does she do it? She stores the energy, and then releases it in a flash like a sprung jack-in-the-box. Clever. The animal latches the hammer limb so it can't move. She contracts her muscle as much as she can (compressing the jack-in-the-box). This much stored energy could hurt her limb, but doesn't because of another clever device.
The mantis shrimp peers with orange eyes and probing antennae. Her red forearm is in its up, locked position
The sun lights the shallow seafloor off the coast of Bali. About 10 yards (10 m) down, an emerald-green body roams the bottom with blue eyestalks extended and green antennae waving. The hungry peacock mantis shrimp spots prey; she cocks her red, hammer-like forelimb — ready.
A small, creamy, brown-spotted snail (confident within his thick spiral shell) inches along the seafloor in his slow-one-footed way. The predator closes fast, and hovers above the snail. The mantis shrimp (who isn't a shrimp) releases her spring-loaded hammer-like claw; it flashes forward — too fast to see — in an underhand blow that smashes the snail's shell with a loud bang.
The speed of the strike (up to 50 mph, or 23 m/s) creates cavitation bubbles between the shrimp's hammer-like heel and the struck snail. The bubbles collapse, and generate heat, light, and sound. The shell shatters with a flash too-fast-to-see, and a bang. Watch the flash (called shrimpoluminescence for another species) in the video, slowed by a factor of 900. (Courtesy of Sheila Patek, Wyatt Korff and Roy Caldwell/UC Berkeley) Though the mantis shrimp's tough heel is impregnated with hard minerals, still she must shed the pitted, damaged surface every few months, and grow new heel armor.
A mantis shrimp (more elegantly known as a stomatopod) can break aquarium glass.
"There are a half dozen species capable of breaking a standard glass aquarium," says biologist Roy Caldwell a professor at the University of California at Berkeley. Including, of course, the peacock mantis, which gets about 7 inches (17 cm) long.
Caldwell, S.N. Patek and W.L. Korff discovered how the mantis shrimp generates such powerful blows. It isn't muscle power alone. In fact, the mantis shrimp (a crustacean, distantly related to lobsters, crabs and shrimp) needs 470,000 watts of power per kilogram of muscle to do the job — orders of magnitude higher than the fastest-moving muscles can deliver. The creature's weapon needs much energy delivered fast.
So, how does she do it? She stores the energy, and then releases it in a flash like a sprung jack-in-the-box. Clever. The animal latches the hammer limb so it can't move. She contracts her muscle as much as she can (compressing the jack-in-the-box). This much stored energy could hurt her limb, but doesn't because of another clever device.
