Well, after a few months of smooth sailing, I unexpectedly lost my mantis last week and I'm still trying to figure out why. I'd like to make sure my tank is safe before adding and possibly loosing another mantis.
This is what happened:
Sunday through Monday she'd been showing all the signs of getting ready to molt, eating less, not hammering, and being unusually reclusive. Tuesday, I bought some new coral frags and added them to the tank. They were a striped mushroom, some soft neon green tree coral frags, a green mushroom in poor health, and some zoanthids. I wouldn't have gone for the mushroom but the same colony had been in the dealer tank for weeks, looking generally lousy, and I figured that maybe one of the polyps would do better in my tank since corals have a habit of bouncing back when in there. It was semi-mushy and disintegrating.
I added these to the tank and also swapped out my heater for a different one. The old heater had busted, bringing the average temp down to 74 degrees. So I thorougly washed my new heater with hot water, since it -may- have been used briefly in a treatment tank (I can't remember) and put that it.
To my great surprise the temperature spiked unexpectedly. The pilot light on the heater wasn't on but within hours it'd hit 84 degrees! I unplugged the heater and let the tank cool gradually.
Meanwhile, Crystal had done what I expected and sealed up her burrow with rubble Tuesday midday. Wednesday went by with no sign of her. So did Thursday.
Friday morning all was the same, but I came home Friday afternoon to find her burrow partially dismantled, with her corpse hanging out. I know it wasn't the current that did this and there is nothing else motile in the tank, so she must have gotten partially out before she died. Her rapts were NOT sprung, though her maxillipeds were spread (also not "sprung"), possibly due to the current. Her color was a bit pale but she otherwise looked normal; I don't know if she actually molted or not.
Because so many things changed immediately before this I'm not sure what went wrong, or if it was a combination of things. Could it have been toxins from the mushroom? Toxins from the heater? My understanding with mantis poisoning is that they show signs of distress and death rapidly, not days later, and the rapts are usually sprung. Could it have been that temperature spike? The stress of the temperature and my hands in the tank as she was getting ready to molt? Or just a bad molt?
I'm thinking and hoping it wasn't toxins, because everything else in the tank has looked wonderful through all this and the microcrustacean population has showed no signs of stress. The amphipods, copepods and isopods are even more abundant since I lost her.
What should I look for as the possible cause, and how do I know if it's safe to put another mantis in there?
This is what happened:
Sunday through Monday she'd been showing all the signs of getting ready to molt, eating less, not hammering, and being unusually reclusive. Tuesday, I bought some new coral frags and added them to the tank. They were a striped mushroom, some soft neon green tree coral frags, a green mushroom in poor health, and some zoanthids. I wouldn't have gone for the mushroom but the same colony had been in the dealer tank for weeks, looking generally lousy, and I figured that maybe one of the polyps would do better in my tank since corals have a habit of bouncing back when in there. It was semi-mushy and disintegrating.
I added these to the tank and also swapped out my heater for a different one. The old heater had busted, bringing the average temp down to 74 degrees. So I thorougly washed my new heater with hot water, since it -may- have been used briefly in a treatment tank (I can't remember) and put that it.
To my great surprise the temperature spiked unexpectedly. The pilot light on the heater wasn't on but within hours it'd hit 84 degrees! I unplugged the heater and let the tank cool gradually.
Meanwhile, Crystal had done what I expected and sealed up her burrow with rubble Tuesday midday. Wednesday went by with no sign of her. So did Thursday.
Friday morning all was the same, but I came home Friday afternoon to find her burrow partially dismantled, with her corpse hanging out. I know it wasn't the current that did this and there is nothing else motile in the tank, so she must have gotten partially out before she died. Her rapts were NOT sprung, though her maxillipeds were spread (also not "sprung"), possibly due to the current. Her color was a bit pale but she otherwise looked normal; I don't know if she actually molted or not.
Because so many things changed immediately before this I'm not sure what went wrong, or if it was a combination of things. Could it have been toxins from the mushroom? Toxins from the heater? My understanding with mantis poisoning is that they show signs of distress and death rapidly, not days later, and the rapts are usually sprung. Could it have been that temperature spike? The stress of the temperature and my hands in the tank as she was getting ready to molt? Or just a bad molt?
I'm thinking and hoping it wasn't toxins, because everything else in the tank has looked wonderful through all this and the microcrustacean population has showed no signs of stress. The amphipods, copepods and isopods are even more abundant since I lost her.
What should I look for as the possible cause, and how do I know if it's safe to put another mantis in there?
