wondering how many people have had hitch hiking mantis shrimps?
 

Just curious to see how many people have found mantis shrimps in their tank, and what they did with them.

thanks
craig

Had about 4 so far. 2 smashers and one spear in my 65 and 1 smasher out of a tank I had set up last year.

hey chris do you have pics of them? specifically the spearer. I dont mean to hijack, but im really curious because I have never heard of any spearers hitching in. it's certainly possible with some species, but ive never seen it.

When I setup my SW tank (FOWLR) in the early 90's, I had a mantis in the tank for about 1 year before I saw it. I immediately blamed it for killing a fish and killed it. (I was a newbie and ill-informed)

I converted my FOWLR to a reef in late 2003. In that shipment of LR, I also got a mantis. This time, I removed him to a separate 2 gallon tank where he lived alone for about 4 years. He was/is an entertaining pet.

When I completed construction of my LAST aquarium, I received about 6-7 mantis in my LR shipments. This time, I elected to just leave them in the tank. When I shut down the old system, I also transferred in my previous pet mantis.

It has probably been 6 months now since I've seen a mantis in the system. I suspect they may have all died, or...they've just become very secretive. I would like to think that they are still in there. I certainly continue to hear loud "snaps", but these could also be pistol shrimp as I received many, many of those in the same shipment.

So...my advice is to just leave them be. The common hitching smashers aren't fish killers, and hermit crabs are dime-a-dozen. I also witnessed my mantis hunting/killing pest crabs, so some might consider them a beneficial hitchiker in that respect.

I've had one that I know about and I just left him alone, never saw him do any damage and after a few years I even forgot to look around for him...that was seven years ago, I'm not even sure he's still alive

Read my Sunday blog regarding the manits.. we found one in a cyphastrea..

No I didn't take a picture of it. I found it only because my larger Mantis I had spent most of the time in that rock. I removed it one day and thought I had him still in the rock. I ended up smashing the rock. Did not find the big one but found a really tiny spear mantis. Only one I have ever seen except for on the internet.