mantis released larvea!!!

[gharner]

tonite (30 min ago) when i peered into the small 3 gallon aquarium that is home to my adult female N. oersteddi i noticed white shrimp like things swimming in the water particularly near the surface. i immediately thought it was myses shrimp or perhaps some hermit crab larvea, but they were swimming differently. i sucked some up in a pipette and dripped them onto a piece of plastic where i observed them more closely. they appear to be larval mantis shrimp, and i am pretty certain of that. i am able to see swimarrettes as well as the rapt appendages. (the raps appear to be fairly simple and acually rather long). when the larvea were placed on the plastic in a shallow drop of water they even used the rapts to push with when they were stuck. they are whitish/transparent in color and i measured them as well. they are 4mm long. the eyes on them are circular and black and when the flashlight is shinned on them, they reflect.

Dr. Roy, do you know anything about how the mother mantis holds the eggs (how long) and how long it would take for them to reach this size of 4mm? i got the female about a month and a half ago and she didnt have any eggs and in all the time ive had her i havnt seen her holding any eggs. the only thing is that when she first arrived she was very reclusive and didnt show much interest in food until about last week. now she feeds like a champ and comes out of her den a little.

i wish i had a camera to take some pics but my camera quality cannot focus on the little things.

worse yet....im leaving tomorrow at 5am to go to the outer banks and i will be gone for a week! i wont even be able to witness the little guys gettin sucked into the filter and becoming coral food! haha.
i dont think that the place im staying in has internet acces so it may be about a week before you hear back from me.

thanks,
garrett

 

[gharner]

when i first saw them there was about 2- 3 dozen of them.....by 1am there was only about a dozen. its 4:30 and there is actually another batch it seems, i have a flashlight shining and theryre all crouded around the light, too many of them to count. i got some very blury cell phone pics but it just kinda looks like a white blob cause theyre all bunched together in the light.
im now off to the OBX

 

[Gonodactylus]

Females can store sperm for weeks or even months as long as they don't molt. When she lays the eggs, they are mixed with a "glue" and she forms them into a ball. Females usually do not eat or leave their cavity when brooding. Each egg is about .7 mm in diameter and a 3 inch female will have 1000 -3000 eggs. N. oerstedii eggs are guarded by the female for three weeks. They then hatch. The larvae are thigmotactic and form a mass that remain with her in the cavity for another week, molting three times. If you disturb the mass, the larvae will swim, but quickly reform into a mass because they are attracted to one another. After the third molt, they have used up all of their yolk and become free swimming and photopositive. This is why you find then at the surface or attracted to a flashlight beam. Without food, they will survive another two or three days.

Don't feel bad that they are going to die. It is almost impossible to rear them since they become highly cannibalistic, must be maintained individually and won't leave the plankton and settle for at least a month. I have only once successfully reared larvae and to my knowledge only a couple of other people have succeeded.

Roy