Well... they must like it in the 10 gallon together...

[Dazz]

cause they spawned. I came home to see about 50+ baby mantis in my 10 gallon where I house 2 mantis.

I have no green water or roitifers so I hope they can live on the huge number of pods in the tank.

 

[ReefMagic]

Sounds cool. what kind of mantis' spawned together? i was hoping to try that with my 20g .

 

[Dazz]

Not quite sure, but they are 2 smashers from florida.

 

[Jace18]

Do you have any pics?

 

[Gonodactylus]

Are these eggs that hatched, larvae swimming in the water column, or small juvenile individuals running around on the substrate. I would be very surprised if they had made it past the early larval stages. After the eggs hatch, there are three larvale stages that remain in the cavity with the mother (1 week). The larvae then enter the water column for a month before they settle as 1 cm long juveniles.

ROy

 

[Dazz]

Well, they look exactly like full grown mantis, just tiny, and they are in the water column when the lights are on. They are probably 5-8mm in length. I will snap some pics tonight when I get home.

 

[goblinsharkman]

u gonna sell them?

 

[Dazz]

Here is as good a pic as I could get. There are about half as many as there were yesterday, they are probably being eaten by the curly cue anemones =).

 

[Gonodactylus]

These are indeed larval Neogonodactylus. It they follow the usual course, they will last a couple days and then starve to death. At this stage, they are strongly attracted to light, so if you want to catch them, turn off all the lights and shine a flashlight in from the side of the tank. They should collect near the glass in the beam of the light.

Roy

 

[Dazz]

What do they eat? I cant save them now but maybe for future reference. I'm assuming roitifers and phyto?

 

[Gonodactylus]

Rotifers and enriched brine shrimp larvae are what has worked in the past. To get ready, when the eggs are laid it will take them about three weeks to hatch and the larvae will then stay with the mother for another week. They don't eat until they swim up into the water column

They are very cannibalistic, so you will have to isolate individuals in small containers.

Roy

 

[RogueCorps]

How about feeding cyclop-eeze? Not sure if you've seen it yet Roy but basically it's a frozen tube of red copepods.

That's really cool Dazz! Does your pair cohabitate in one den? And are they N. Wennerae?

Thanks for the info and pic!

-Rogue

 

[Dazz]

Well, they seem to stay on other sides of the tank and rarely will they come in contact and fight. Like I said, it's a 10 gallon, I actually have no live sand in there, but I have about 15lbs of live rock plus I have 2 large musscles or clams (not photosynthetic) in there too. Amazingly I have a HUGE pod population in there, and I dont really feed the tank apart from small ammounts of food to the Mantis Shrimp.