Hemisquilla are not the easiest stomatopod to keep. Temperature around 15-18 C usually is appropriate. Getting them to eat can be really difficult. Sometimes animals refuse to eat for weeks. I suspect there was nothing wrong that you did or with your set-up. More likely, it was the rough life the animal hasd the previous few days. They were almost certainly caught in a trawl - probably used for Halibat. Occasionally fishermen come up with dozens or even hundreds in on haul. So you have all these mantis shrimp and everything else thrashing around in the net, they get dumped onto the deck, thrown into buckets with lots of other animals, and are transported to the wholesaler and then to the market over several hours/days at who knows what temperature. I'm surprised that any made it alive to the market.
The interesting thing is that these large hauls seem to happen in the spring during the breeding season and they usually occur a few years after an El Nino. We think that recruitment is particularly favorable in El Nino years when warm water from Mexico carries up Hemisquilla larvae that settle out. What we are seeing are those recruits that arrived in 1997-98.
There is another mantis shrimp, Pseudosquillopsis marmorata that also occurs off southern California and Mexico. It is smaller (maximum length 10 cm) and is easily identified by its purple telson. (It actually looks a lot like Pseudosquilla.) The only one I have ever seen live came from Tamales Bay north of San Francisco. It was found in an oyster growers stock. It probably arrived during the powerful 1982 El Nino and survived until 1990 when captured. Anyway, this species has a very unusual eye that I would love to study on a live specimen. If anyone sees one in the fish market or anywhere else, I would happily pay $100 plus shipping costs for it. I would probably even fly down and pick it up personally.
Roy
... hoping she'll do alright. I'll try giving her some krill tonight. If anyone has any other suggestions, that'd be great. Thanks!
