The swimmeretes are yellow with blue fringing. The body is mostly dark green with a redish hue spread over it. I'd say it's about an inch to a inch and a half long. Sorry I don't have a better picture of the tail. I'm guessing they go through color changes as they get older and the tail gives the deffinative answer?
A week ago I took it out of the curing tank and put it in a 2.5 gallon nano with 2 pieces of LR. I'm not sure of the origin of the LR that he came in...it was branch LR, but other than that I don't know where it was collected.
Since I've put it in the nano, it doesn't come out very often. Sometimes I'll here a few clicks after I turn the lights out in the bedroom. It's made a burrow in the bottom of one of the LR pieces. Since the tank is bare bottom, I can see that it still has two small pieces of rock wedged in the opening.
I have some dried krill and frozen Formula 1 that I can feed if necessary. If I don't see it coming out for a while, at what point should I start getting worried about it? It's already survived 3 weeks in a LR curing tub.
I actually caught it by mistake...it was entirely too easy from all the horror stories I've heard about people trying to get them out of their tanks. I was transferring the rock from to a tub of clean water, after I put the last piece in, I was getting ready to pump the old water into a bucket with a powerhead that I was using for circulation. I didn't have a strainer cap on it, and noticed something "dark" caught in the intake.
I've never had a mantis problem, and the thought never crossed my mind when I reached into the powerhead to see if I could pull out the piece of "debris." You know that initial shock/revulsion when you touch something and it doesn't feel the way you expected?
I put my thumb over the end of the hose attached to the powerhead so it would stop sucking water, and this thing swam out of the powerhead. I got a small net and dumped it in a glass quart jar and took it outside into the sunlight for better observation. It didn't take too long for me to figure out what it was, and then I had a "what if" moment....and gratefully rubbed my intact appendages on my pants.
My wife didn't seem TOO impressed at the time, but asked me if I was going to keep it. She's more worried about it breaking the tank and spilling water all over the dresser in the bedroom.
Kevin