Advice on ID-ing a small mantis (no pic yet, just a story heh)

cobaltplasma

New member
For the last 6 days I've started setting and prepping what would be my new mantis tank. My 12gal Eclipse was to house my spearer (P.ciliata), she seems happy there with enough to do heh, but my new 26gal. I had planned on setting up for a smasher; larger substrate, almost no sand aside from the starter scoops from my 12gal., lots of live rock. Well as it turns out sometimes life tosses you odd curve balls to keep you on your toes.

Late tonight, just a few minutes ago, I was looking at how some starting bits of micro algae had popped up, pretty happy with that, but then I saw what I thought was a crab or something small retreating back into a tiny hole. By tiny hole I mean maybe 1/8" across. I saw two white dibs withdraw into the darkness....when there shouldn't be anything alive in there really aside from the couple of straggler snails that were on a piece of rock I got from the beach. The rocks I got, btw, were pretty sunbleached and dry, left in my car during the day while my wife and I went to town, so I figured I'd give them a quick wash and put them into my tank to start cycling...after a day (last Saturday) I rinsed and added about 15lbs. of crushed coral substrate, made the tank pretty cloudy as I didn't do a terribly good job :(

So nothing should live, right? Right?

WRONG!

Going back to my story, I'm looking at this mystery Genesis hole that has magically spawned life...and I see the little white dibs again. This time one of them rotates about!.. I wait a bit, call my wife with a bit of excitement.. We sat in front of my tank for a few minutes and out pop those EYES again, the eyes of a tiny baby (juvenile heh) mantis! I have no idea how it survived all the hardships, from being stuck in a rock in my car all day, to getting rinsed down in a bucket, to dealing with cloudy crap from my inability to properly and fully wash gravel, but it magically did. They are beasty :D

I ran to the freezer, pulled out my silversides and cut off a tiny piece, skewered it and brought it back. Poor bugger must have been starving because almost as soon as the skewer went in his head popped out. When it reached a couple inches from his burrow he darts all the way out, grabs the piece, kicks a few times, and flies back into his hole. He's maybe, maybe 3/4" long, tops, almost a translucent white-ish color. He peeks out once in a while, seems much more lively now that he has food, but I can't for the life of me ID him.

Which brings me to my questions and request. Can anyone take a wild guess as to what species it might be, it being tiny and living in a hole of live rock? My gut is saying it's a P.ciliata, I'm guessing that based on the tail and I haven't heard any smacking from my tank; at first I thought for sure P.ciliata because of the eyes, but they're so small and G.falcatus seems to have a somewhat similar shape at least... But do juveniles bust holes in live rock when they're that small?

My request is... does anyone have pictures of smaller mantises of the P.ciliata and G.falcatus species? Aside from the coaxing of food, I only see his eyes and occasionally his tail when he spins to go back inside. Can you differentiate species 'easily' at smaller sizes or am I just going to have let this bugger grow a little before I can get an ID on him? Do meral spots show in stomatopods that small for P.ciliata and G.falcatus? I ask about those two specifically since it seems they'd be the most common that I'd find in such shallow intertidal/beach areas.

Man, talk about exciting though! My brand new tank has a miracle baby mantis to go with it haha ^_^ Guess I don't need to order one online...well...saying this one makes it *crosses fingers*

Anyways, that's my tale for the night...I'll try to get pictures of him, at least of his tiny eyes when he looks out. Perhaps he'll be out and about more tomorrow since he'll have more energy having eaten :D Gah, sorry this is so long, just pretty excited about this find! ^_^
 
Update with some tiny images. Decided on naming him "Genki", hopefully it sticks heh. Anyways, he's been in his burrow most of the day, but I snapped a couple of quick photos when my wife was feeding him. I PM'd Dr. Caldwell, asking him about some specifics about small adult mantises... I'm leaning towards G.falcatus (or some similar smasher). The upper body seems like my P.ciliata (and yeah, that's a thin bamboo skewer in image #2, that's how small he is in comparison):

body1.jpg
body2.jpg


However, the telson and tail remind me a lot more of G.falcatus, in that it's shape is more snub and the spikes at the end are much broader than a P.ciliata's, which has a more triangular-shaped telson with much thinner spines at the end. Supposedly young adults, smaller stomatopods are supposed to retain the general shape and structure of fully grown adults, perhaps with a bit more delicate features.

tail1.jpg
tail2.jpg


The pictures aren't the best, he's really hard to catch on film, still skiddish but eating like there's no tomorrow (figured as much, he basically had no food for the first 6 days in the tank since we never knew he was there), but he seems to more readily peek out if me or my wife is present; he used to shy away deeper into the burrow if we squatted down to have a look.
 
Contratulations! That's a very interesting color for a mantis...looks kind of translucent to me!

Off topic, but are there any pure white mantis shrimps?
 
I think it's too early to tell the species specifically unless Dr. Roy pops in and names it. Usually I see animals go through a pigmentation change when they mature, especially among crustations. I'm no expert but I think it will aquire a color when it grows.
 
Thanks micstarz :) Yeah it actually is transluscent a little, which is what got me started thinking that it might be a P.ciliata or similar species. The closest toa pure white mantis was seeing an almost-all white P.ciliata for sale from stomatopod.com. It had some speckling on it, probably came from an area with lots of really light sand, not pure white but that's the closest I've seen.

Koshmar I agree, although the tail right now is ruling out P.ciliata at least. Dr. Caldwell's PM mentioned that smaller mantises will have the telsons of their larger counterparts, just possibly a little more delicate on the features. Whenever I see his tail stick out, I know it's not my spearer (P.ciliata) or any of the other spearers that I can see from Dr. Caldwell's list, and looks a lot like the telson of a G.falcatus (or a similar smasher) only smaller, more so when you narrow it down to Hawaii-based stomatopods. But I do agree that it's premature to definitely say one way or another which species he is, but going from the master list he definitely doesn't seem to be a spearer at least. Which is good for me :)
 
Hehe yeah, that was something that made me think of my P.ciliata: When she eats you can see a bit of darkness where her stomach is because of her current shell color/tint; when I first got her you could see any of that due to her coloration and pattern, but with her current light green shell you can.

I got another good look at his tail, the telson is definitely more smasher-like than spearer it seems, with 4 solid spikes on a broad telson. Time, and a few hermits, will tell I guess :)
 
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:P My P. ciliata is the same color! Except that I'm hoping he/she will molt to match my black substrate with hints of green, red and yellow from the macroalgae and corals :P
 
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