Adopted a Hitch hiking Mantis

One of my customers came in yesterday with a hitch hiker in a tupperware container for ID. It was a teensy weensy mantis, best I could tell, It is less than half an inch long but when I put it under the microscope I could see little eyes and an "oh so cute" face. I called hubby and said, "Set up a ten gallon in the bedroom please!" and rushed the little bugger home. Its TINY, and I mean TINY and I wasn't even sure what to do with it. I set up a rubble pile, like I would do for a pod pile, with a Penguin 100 and a 50W heater. So far, if I shine a flashlight at the tank it comes to the light and it has eaten cyclopeeze once today already and then ran back into the rubble pile. I know I need to get a burrow for it and more LR, but not until it's big enough to see without a magnifying glass. I put a sponge on the uptake of the filter to keep it from getting sucked in and I may get a turtle heater later or build a false wall in a tank to keep the filtration/heater behind with ABS plastic. But first I want to know which species I have (Probably the carribean or gulf species) before deciding on a final home.

Does anyone know how fast these things grow? I need to know how much time I have to get a mantis safe home built. Do I need to be feeding anything other than frozen cyclopeeze and rotifers? Maybe mini mysis shrimp?

Any advice would be appreciated. We usually keep them at the store when people bring them in and adopt them out, but this one is so small we had nowhere to keep it. So, tank number EIGHT, it appears will be a mantis tank (or already is).

Ginny

 

Ginny,

The most common hitchhiker is N. wennerae http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/arthro...costraca/royslist/species.php?name=n_wennerae

You could use a small piece of PVC so you can control where it makes it's den. Then you can hide the PVC with LR and rubble so you can't see it. Frozen mysis would be a good choice while it's that size.

 

Wow.. I wish I had a mantis hitchiker. I always wanted to keep one in a smaller tank.

Good job on putting it in a good home!

 

How often should I feed it? It is smaller than a frozen mysis to give you an idea, and it is chasing frozen cyclops around. I'll try some mini mysis tomorrow. I'm going to try to feed at the same time every day, like I do the eel (the eel gets fed weekly though, not daily). I assume soaking food in vitality or selcon is a good idea? I'll be putting the cuc in as soon as I know he's big enough to make it. This mantis is smaller than an amphipod, as a matter of fact I had to put it under a dissecting microscope at 4x to prove to myself it wasn't an amphipod.

Ginny

 

My son's mantis, "Princess," was also a rescue. The LFS guy was going to feed it to something, but called us because he know my son was looking for one. She looks like the N. wennerae variety in the link Curt pointed out. When we got her, she was about an inch long. She's in a 9 gallon nano tank with sand. We started with just a piece or two of rock and she went to work pretty fast on making her den. We started her early on little piece of krill, which she would take right off the tongs. She still does that and, and also really likes the cerinth snails that my son steals from my tank! We've had her probably 6 or 7 months now. She's gone through several molts and is about 2 inches long now. When she was little, the molts were a lot closer together. She would close off her den with a little rock or shell and disappear for 3 or 4 days. When she came out, she was visibly bigger each time. She hasn't molted in probably a month now, but she's been very busy lately, which is usually a sign she's going to molt again. She's just a few feet from my computer and I can hear her banging away at the rocks all day!

Incidently, she was wrapped around a little hermit crab, trying to get to it, when we got her. She shared her tank with the hermit crab for actually a few months. One day, the hermit vanished. We later found pieces of it's empty shell....

Post some pictures when it gets big enough to see!

 

3 or 4 feedings a week would be good. Soaking the food is definitely a good idea.

 

We also have a damsel in the tank. They're pretty funny to watch. The damsel will back up to the mantis and twitch. One day, the damsel was doing his twitching thing and turned around - the mantis blasted him with a face full of sand. ;D

 

We lost it. The guy who gave him to me was dipping his corals in iodine when he found it. It molted several times in a few days we didn't ever see it again.

I have another one shipping to the store this week.

Ginny

 

sorry to hear good luck with this next one