Man He Wont Stop!!

[beelzebob]

so my little g smithii has been smashing the inside of his rock for about 24 hrs and counting.

yesterday i came home, and my water looked just a wee bit murky.

ran all my tests, everthing checks out ok. so i sit down next to the tank and realize that Bub is just goin ape **** inside his rock.

he is just smashing away at the insides of his rock making his living room bigger i guess. so im sitting there trying to figure why my water has a lil murk in it, when i take notice of Bubs home.

his piece of Lr has a bunch of tiny lil holes in it, so i was watching it and every time there is a "WHACK" inside the rock, a bunch of dust shoots out all the holes in the LR.
WACK WHACK WHACK, my water is murky

looks like a motionless stone locomotive.

cant figure it out though, even after he put up his door, he just kept wackin away all through the night, and even this morning when i left.

he's just doing an addition to his home right? not like stressed or P. O'd right?

 

[Thurge]

Sounds like he is just in home improvement mode.

 

[turnabod]

my peacock is a regular bob vila. he constantly builds and rearranges his cave.

 

[ZC]

That acctually sounds normal. My peacock is always breaking the smaller rocks and stacking them around her PVC cave. There are days she will pound the rocks for hours!!!! And she won't quit til she breaks them! So if I were you I would not worry to much about it!

 

[Gonodactylus]

G. smithii normally live in fairly tight cavities in LR and have to enlarge them to grow. They typically go on binge of striking the cavity for a week or two before molting.

Roy

 

[beelzebob]

AGAIN?!?!

AGAIN?!?!

no way, he just molted!

can a mantis molt too much Dr. Roy?

 

[Gonodactylus]

They are pretty predictable in their pre-molt behavior.


It depends on what you mean by too much. The more food the animal gets, the more it will molt and more it will grow each molt. It may not live quite as long if it molts and grows very large quickly, but from a fitness point of view, it would lay more eggs more quickly which is good.

In the field, females that were getting lots of food as adults would put more effort into egg laying and not accelerate the molt cycle, but in the aquarium without a mate, that doesn't happen.

Roy

 

[Skipper2]

How often do they lay eggs? I think I have a pair. My husband tried to rid the LR of them when we set up, thinking that they were real bad to have. Only thing that came out was a fluffy ball of pink eggs. I see the one peek out, just sitting there not moving and I hear snapping inside the rock. They are now our pets (after reading more about them.) When we put the LR back in they have been very busy setting up "forts" around the base of the rock in the sand and plugging up wholes. Very busy. Anything we need to do for them or know about if they set up a nursery? They took food from us that we skewered and set out in front of their "fort" in the sand. It appears that we have the small green variety of Mantis, Neogonodactylus Wennerae. Also do we need to try and move the little family to a different tank when my husband starts setting up the reef or can they all live happily together?

 

[Gonodactylus]

N. wennerae do not form life long pairs. A male will guard the female for about a week before the eggs are laid - then he leaves. I have no evidence that they preferentially re-pair the next breeding episode, although some times the male will find a new cavity close to the female increasing the chance that they will re-mate. The eggs are brooaded by the female for three weeks and then the larvae stay with the mother in the cavity for another week before entering the plankton for a month. If the eggs hatch, one morning you will see hundreds of transparent, 2 mm long larvae swimming near the surface. They are strongly attracted to light, so you can collect them at night by shining a flashlight into the tank. They will swim toward it and collect near the glass where the light bean is.

Females can store sperm for up six month as long as they don't molt, so it is not uncommon to have a female lay fertilized eggs when she has not been near a male for months. In the field large adult N. wennerae females lay eggs every other month and molt every 4 months. They do not molt and lay eggs at the same time. Smaller animals molt more frequently and lay less often.

Roy

 

[Skipper2]

Thank you very much for the information. I will have to wait and see what happens next. If by chance I end up with the larvae, what should I do with them? Should we set up a smaller tank for them? I am also trying to identify differences in the male and female so that I can know for sure what I have. From the reading, I look at the eye stalks to tell the difference, right? I have not seen both out at the same time yet. I could even have 2 females. One more question....do they "fan" the eggs? I could see little feather type appendeges fanning before we lost the eggs in the dip (we could not see the eggs). We thought it was a crab at the time but couldn't see much. We haven't seen anything large enough to be anything other than a Mantis.
Again thank you very much.

 

[Pea-brain]

The babies are cannabalistic. They each need a separate container. When they grow up they will also each need their own tank as they aren't exactly "friendly" to eachother. I asked this question in This thread It should be enough if you do end up with babies. they are not easy to raise but i'm sure the prospect of tank bred mantises are something many people in this forum are more than happy to pay for. The diff. between male and female is not between the eyestalks, but under the "belly" near the tail. If you can get it to back up to the glass you will either see 2 small "sticks" sticking inwards (Male) or 2 dots close together (female) you can probably guess what these organs are for. Good luck with raising them!

 

[Skipper2]

Thank you...Wow I think we are over our head in this! I won't let my hubby read this or I am going to have hundreds of little tanks all over my house, lol! Removal sounds best but we might try a few to see if we can raise them ourselves. I will keep studying them for now and see what happens.