mantis (good or bad)

[diggity]

someone stated that a mantis shrimp does not kill fish unless its the spearing type. now i have heard clicking sounds in my tank for awhile now. i have never seen any mantis or pistol shrimp, until yesterday. the dude is black aprox 1 inch long and fast as lighting. he came out when feeding brine. a few questions .......

1. do they (mantis) eat fish ?

2. how do you catch one ?

3. how can you tell the diffrence between the spearing one ?

in the past a have lost 2 fire fish, a few gobis, and blenny, and just now a perc. clown and a small tang. the clown just disappeared, but the tang got really shy, and would hide. he never seemed in distress, no physical damage. water params. are normal and the inverts and other fish seem fine . before the tang expired, seems his body was in a c-shape, kind of paralized ? could only do loops ? any help with these problems would be much appreciated i have a 125 gal reef, 150 lbs lr, 2 curly-q inverts, long tenacle invert, perc clown sand star, mandrin gobi .....slowy the fish are dissapearing

[MDeth]

Spearers don't click

Smashers 'can' eat fish but 'typically' they don't bother. Each stomatopod is its own though.

I would more assume that it is a large pistol and your CUC got to them. Pistols are capable of knocking a fish unconscious with their 'blast' from the larger claw.

You could try the coke bottle trap and hope that works. What do your CleanUpCrew comprise of?

If you had a smasher mantis you'd have a snail shell graveyard.

3) Spearers look like a praying mantis while a smasher's appendage (i believe raptoral if i'm not mistaken) looks like an elbow (because it pretty much is). Oh, and don't try to "see it" with a red light or something as they can see a broader spectrum than us :p

[diggity]

i do have lots of shells from diffrent snails and crabs. turbos, blue legged, zebra, nasau (not sure of spelling) and a few others. i had aprox 100 crabs, and 100 mix snails. my arrow crab ate a few and then got rid of him. since then they slowly turn into just shells. mostly the snails, crabs seem to be ok. my tang seemed dazed and confused before he died, could that be from the mantis ? i have not seen any other thing just a black mantis /

[MDeth]

Hm...I'd say yours is an exception to any rules. Although most mantids go CRAZY over crabs (although theres really no way to see the crabs)

[djnzlab1]

HI,
I ve seen traps for undesirable, maybe you could use a small container wedge in a rock like a cave and the bugger will go in.
I ve heard they are aggresive animals I haven't heard about them not eating fish. I think they will eat anything they can kill.
Doug

[TinFury]

I have 2 in a 10Gal. They mostly keep to themselves.

[inwall75]

If they are starving, they might eat a fish but it's rare. I've kept mantis nano's with fish in them for years. (I just never let them starve).

[Untamed]

I really doubt that the mantis is your problem...