Mantis babies?

[TN_sledge]

OK, I leave for work yesterday and check out the refugium on the way out. Looks good everything is fine. I get home in the afternoon and holy (censored) what is going on.
One of my 2 (unidentified) manti is curled up out in the open. Yep dead as it can be.
On the other side of the tank I see what looks like a molt but I havenââ"šÂ¬Ã¢"žÂ¢t seen mantis
number 2 yet and in the water literally hundreds of small crustaceans that are free swimming everywhere with 2 visible eyes, a pale white color and maybe 1/16th of an inch long. I am almost sure they are not the normal ââ"šÂ¬Ã…"œpodââ"šÂ¬Ã‚ that I usually see and my refugium is still kind of new to have this kind of population of pods appear over night/8 hours.

Did my mantis have babies? If so what if any are the chances of some of them surviving in a closed system?

 

[oddball_from_ac]

if they did bread the babies will starve in about 2-3 days because we cant match what they need to feed on in the wild.
dylan

 

[TN_sledge]

if they did bread the babies will starve in about 2-3 days because we cant match what they need to feed on in the wild.
dylan

What do they feed on?

 

[Gonodactylus]

There have been a few successful attempts to raise gonodactylid larvae. Brine shrimp nauplii are a bit to large and are nutritionally lacking to start with, but after a week or so when the larvae get a bit bigger, I have successfully used hatched brineshrimp kept for 12 hours in a solution with Selco. For the first week, rotifers seem to work.

The biggest problem is that the larvae are highly cannibalistic, so they should be kept individually in cups of water changed daily. This is a big job and I have only succeeded at doing it a couple of times.

Roy

 

[TN_sledge]

Thanks for the help. Sounds like it could be snack time for
my seahorse tank!

 

[Gonodactylus]

Good idea. For the first day or two after they leave the brood chamber, stomatopod larvae are strongly attracted to light. This is in fact what gets them out of their cavity and up into the plankton. When the room is dark, you can use a bright flashlight aimed into the tank from the side to concentrate the larvae and use a turkey baster to suck them up. Last week one of our large O. scyllarus females hatched larvae and we sucked up more than a tablespoon of solid larvae. Our other small stomatopods like Taku and Pullosquilla had a feast.

Roy