Tiny mantis?

[HBtank]

Ok, so I have searched and I have seen the threads on mis-identifying amphipods as mantis etc..

I have a good idea of copepods, amphipods, and isopods, and have many of each in my tank, along with mysis and every other imaginable hitchiker. Whatever these are they are not like any of the above that I have seen.

They look like tiny mantis to me. And a whole bunch of them. And I do not think they are babies, I swear I could see eggs on one with my magnifying glass.

They are in burrows along the glass and are white/tan and 1/4 - 1/2 of an inch. Because they are so small and in their burrows, I can barely make them out beyond having some basic characteristic that make me think mantis.

These supposed mantis would have copius amounts of food perfect for their size in my tank. I have thousands of baby cerith snails, mysis and pods that cover the sand every night.

I will collect one tonight for a picture and post the conclusion, should be fairly easy to suck one that is close to the surface up out of it's burrow with a baster.

We will see what it is, because it seems that I HAVE to be wrong from all that I have read.

 

[Thurge]

Without a picture it would definaelty just be guessing as to what it is. Have you been able to get a picture yet?

 

[justinl]

well a mantis species that would reach sexual maturity at 1/4 of an inch would be extremely rare at best, and the odds of having THAT species hitch into your tank is ridiculously, and the odds of having them breed is just astronomical... so i doubt what you have are mantids based on the description given.

do they have oversized raptoral appendages? if not, then it isnt a mantis... or it is a mantis but one that had the raps broken off for whatever reason.

that said, +1 on a pic.

 

[styndall]

I've actually seen some things that are tiny and reminiscent of mantises in my pico tank. They're far too small to actually be mantises, usually only a few millimeters long at most. I didn't think a thing about them until once I watched two of the little buggers fighting - they fought with appendages that looked like spearer-type raptorial appendages, with a total span that was longer than their bodies.

I have hundreds of these little many-legged arthropods in my tank, colored either milky white or brown. I thought they might be a type of isopod, but google didn't show me anything that looked right.

I don't have the photographic equipment to take photos of creatures that small, either.

 

[jdieck]

The shape of Amphipods can easily be confused with tini mantis specially due to the large apendages.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Amphipod_anatomy.svg