Lucky So far

lpapagno

New member
I haven’t seen any gorilla crabs or mantis shrimp yet since I got the rock on Tuesday. I run the light on times and try to match the time of day and year. I have 2 T5 lights for a total of 432 watts and the corals and anemone are thriving. I first have the actinic lights on one set come on in the back and then the 2nd set in the front come on. Then the 10,000K Daylight in the back come on and then the front comes on last. I’m trying to simulate a sunrise and sunset. At night the White Lunar Lights are on and I get the moon glow effect. I have the tank in my bedroom and have some nice relaxing visuals to look at before I go to sleep. So far no bad hitch hikers. Enjoying the show and loving it.:D
 
You will find them. Take a small flashlight and look at the rock in the evening and you will see some... :)
 
or put a peice of small shrimp in there you'll see some mantis poke their heads out. The crabs are a little tougher you really got to look for those buggers. They don't stray to far from their holes for anything.
 
If you get Mantis Shrimp in your rock shipments, what size are normally found if you have them? I recieved 60 lbs of rock and swished them all off in a bucket of tank water followed by putting them in a tub and shooting a syringe of cold seltzer water into the holes, of which there weren't too many. The only things we came up with were a porcelin crab (tiny), a pistol shrimp (tiny), and maybe 10-12 stone/gorilla crabs ranging in size between 1/4 and 1/2 inch across. Is this typical? What size are the mantis shrimp people are finding in their shipments?
 
Mantis are very diffucult sometimes even dosing them with seltzer wont get them out. You just have to watch and listen and then make the bottle trap.
 
....or decide to live with them. If you get a mantis is will not get larger than 1.5"...maybe 1.75".

They aren't fish killers that I've observed. Preferred meal is definitely crabs of all kinds, including hermits.

Strangely, I've seen mine have ample opportunity to kill peppermint shrimp, but they seem uninterested. My guess is that they are just unfamiliar food. I expect they will eventually figure it out and wipe out the shrimp.

This advice is coming from watching the 6 mantis that I have in my tank at the moment.
 
I have been lucky too. I have heard a few snaps but I think that is more of a pistol shrimp than a mantis. I actually want a mantis and I have had a 10 gallon tank set up for months waiting on getting my rock. No luck yet lol. I have tried to bottle trap. Only thing I catch is my peppermint shrimp or my jumbo nassauris snails. Go figure.
 
I got plenty at least 4 big green ones, they are at least 1.5" long. I have witnessed them breaking the shells of the barnacles on the rock. I have seen them eating crab's so that was good, it was the big gorilla that came with the second shipment. I put a bottle trap in and all I catch are the peppermint shrimp and a starfish. I am not sure what to do at this point I guess before I get fish I might have to pull all the rock out and dip it in seltzer salt water, then re add the stuff I want to keep.
 
First part of a 90 package...two huge mantis 1 green right at 2", one red about 1 3/4", both went to the LFS. 5 tiny ones about a half inch and 3 tiny pistol shrimp. I've pulled about 10 gorilla and stone crabs total and I see more. There is also at least 3 more clicking rocks that I’ve used a ton of seltzer water on but nothing will come out of them.

At least 5 small porcelain crabs and one large, about an inch. The wife thinks these things are adorable...they are pretty cool to watch use their "fans" The big one is hungry i now see him putting pieces of the sand into his mouth to try and suck off food.

I'm dreading part 2 with all the bad critters I got with 1. It was easy finding the clicking rocks when I could spread the rock out in the tank.
 
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