Why?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

[Fuegofish777]

ok i finally bought my mantis last night. it was beautiful.. i found a 3 inch 0. Scyllarus ( sorry for the spelling) and it was soooo cool. so i got around to acclimating it and everything was good. but i went to net it out of the bucket it was in and instead of snapping at me it just sat there and went limp. when i put it in the tank it laid on its back and i just figured it was playing dead because i could see its gills moving. a few minutes later it crawled a little bit towards the rocks and then just laid there not moving. a couple minutes passd, and then it wasnt breathing anymore. so i poked it and there was nothing.... what could have killed it in 5 min?!?!? my ammonia is hardly detectable nitrite was undetectable. this was all before the 1 gallon water change i did before the acclimation. i dont actually know what the nitrates are at, im testing right now, but they couldnt have been that high, and there are other inverts in there right now that havent died...

please tell me what i did....

 

[slylie]

most likley was dying in the bag before you acclimated it. was it shipped to you? or taken from an lfs?

 

[Gonodactylus]

Did you check salinity in both the water that the animal came in and in your home tank? O. scyllarus can handle a fair range of salinities, but not a quick change. Often an animal that is already stressed will die when acclimated too quickly. Also, if the animal is beginning to molt, a sudden change in salinity can be fatal.

On the other hand, there have been a number of small O. scyllarus hitting the market the past couple of weeks. The number and size is unusual and leads me to believe that collectors in Indonesia or whereever are targeting O.s. Sometimes when this happens, the collectors resort to usng poison and/or crowd the animals in holding tanks. I've seen entire shipments die a week or so after arriving in LA. Cyanide in low doses does not kill quickly, so it is not unsual to see animals die a week or more after arriving in the U.S.

Roy

 

[Fuegofish777]

well that sucks...the salinity in the tank was 1.024. i didnt check the water in the container. it was from an LFS, not shipped. i could have acclimmated it too quickly, but it showed no signs of struggle or stress other thatn it just sat there and died. i just dont know...all i know is that im ****ed!!!!

 

[Gonodactylus]

We often assume that LFS keep their water at 1.024, but this is far from the case. It is always a good idea to measure both the shipping water as well as your own. If they are too far appart, you can modify your acclimation procedures.

 

[Fuegofish777]

alright ...i really appreciate your help. im gonna try this again as soon as i get some money... i'll be more meticulous next time. its all i can do. but i did find out something cool...they dont like to eat fish....the guy at the LFS said that they often like to eat freshwater platies and that they didnt carry the diseases that goldfish can so he gave me a couple. i tried to put one into his container, and he didnt go after it. it swam right against his face and he left it alone...cool....

 

[Gonodactylus]

O. scyllarus don't usually feed on fish, so using them as food is questionable. Here's another potential problem that I've run into a few times. Sometimes fish in LFS are kept in aquariums with various treatments for Ich, etc. I"ve seen "feeder" fish kept in a copper treatment take out an O. scyllarus really quickly.

I also lost some animals and a couple of tanks when an employee at a LFS packaged some stomatopds in water treated for shipping fish. It contained copper. It never dawned on me that the shipping water contained anything poisonous to stomatopods and we poured it into a couple of 100 tanks. We had to tear them down and start over.

Roy

 

[Fuegofish777]

ya... thats too bad. well...im not one to give up so easily. and escpecialy now that i have had one so close to being in my tank, theres nothing that will stop me....ecept my lack of money./..