Do Mantis Shrimp Swim?

[Ookinohito]

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been losing livestock from my tank. My water is excellent, and I couldn't figure out why. This morning, just as my lights came on, I caught a glimpse of something swimming next to the overflow on my HOB filter. It was about 3/4" long and looked like a small mantis shrimp. It was kind of tan'ish in color. It didn't look like a pod or anything else I've seen except for mantis shrimp. When the lights came on, it bolted into the liverock. I'll try to get a picture if I can.

My question is, do mantis swim like this?

 

[Gonodactylus]

All stomatopods can swim, some better than others. In general, most gonodactylids are good swimmers and some groups like the Haptosquillids make a living swimming up into the water column to pick off small prey. The best swimmers are probably the small Odontodactylus like O. brevirostris from Hawaii and Ol havanensis from Florida. I have clocked swimming close to 1 m per second which is very fast for a 2 inch animal.

Roy

 

[Ookinohito]

Thanks, I just found some info on them on google that talks about their swimming ability. I just can't figure out where he came from. He's pretty small, so I'm assuming very young. My tank has been up for around four months, so my guess is I picked him up after it was up. The only thing I've added since has been snails, fish and shrimp. Could a mantis egg survive being frozen? I ask because I feed my tank frozen foods like Formula One, etc.

 

[Gonodactylus]

All stomatopods have a long larval period and do not survive in an aquarium. The eggs would not survive being frozen.

Roy

 

[Ookinohito]

Then I'm stumped as to it's origin. Oh well. I guess know I have to figure out what to do about it.

 

[sdm]

Phil loves to swim.

 

[StrongHandsMcGee]

Spanky the Flying Mantis loves swimming around his tank like a maniac, and then diving into his zoanthid forest.