Green Mantis Photo

Isaari

New member
A pic of my mantis in his 1/2 gallon nano:
mantis2.jpg
 
Darn he's cute. I have a small green one, about the same size, but he's really, really shy (won't come out in th open at all), and he's not half so cool looking as this little guy.

If you ID him, let me know, as I would be interested to see what you find. I'm new so I'm useless at ID'ing ...

Nice pics.
JJ.
 
Someone here did have an ID for him, but I can't find that post. I'm sure another will know. I'm no expert either :)

He's in my office and after about a month he lost his inhibitions to come out of the rock - probably because I'm next to him 8 hours a day. He's not shy at all now, and wanders around the tank all day long. He'll even swim up to the pump and chill out on it, which is cool because his back sticks out of the water when he does.

Feeding consists of throwing some krill in and watching him swim up to grab it.
 
how do you provide water movement in that tank, im just wondering because i have a 1" mantis in a 1 gal tank and i us an air pump like the german style nano tanks.
 
The smallest pump I could find was a 73gph Micro-jet with adjustable flow (shown below). It has a mesh in back to catch large stuff and the heat it produces keeps the tank around 76 degrees. I tried one other before this, but the flow was too high and it blew the sand around. This was a perfect match for it, and keeps a good current going without blowing things around.

And to follow-up on the ID of my girl, Dr. Caldwell classified her as a Neogonodactylus wennerae.

tank.jpg
 
I couldn't tell you either way, but here's what I received from the Dr.:

This gonodactylid is definitely not Gonodactylus chiragra. Looking at the color, meral spots and first maxillipeds, I would say it is probably either Neogonodactylus bredini or N. wennerae. The two are extremely difficult to tell apart. N. bredini is from the southern and western Carribean and N. wennerae tends to occur in the north and east - Florida, the Bahamas, etc. This is overlap, however.

N. wennerae often show up in live rock from Florida, so I'm guessing that this is the origin of your animal. It probably came from fairly shallow water since it is green - or has been in broad spectrum light for awhile, is about 4 years old, may live another two years and reach a maximum size of 6 cm.

Hope this helps.

Roy
 
Looks just like mine; she was red when I first got her 6 mos ago and has molted three times since then.
 
Back
Top