Found a Mantis Shrimp in my reef!

I have recently discovered a 2"+ ugly Mantis Shrimp in my reef tank and he's eating my hermits and snails. I bought this stupid trap and all I did was catch my good shrimp and hermit crabs. My choices are running out of options. My reef was professionally designed and I hate to think about taking it down but if there is no other way then that is what I'll do. I don't know of any predator that just eats mantis shrimps without killing my good ones. If anybody out there has any constructive ideas let me know. Thanks.

 

find his hole and possibly on your next water change you can try to siphon him out..

 

if your not afraid to kill him you can go caveman style and try to lure him out with food and then spear him with something like a knife tied to a stick. good luck

 

get a small frog gig

 

This thread makes me sad.

What you could do is target feed him and allow him to live in your reef tank. Keep him fed and he won't bother your snails and hermits. I would love to have a mantis in our reef tank. But I'm sure a showdown would ensue with the mantis and the tiger pistol shrimp we have, so that's a no go.

Or, find where his hole is, and try again with the trap or a glass jar and put it right in front of his hole and trap him that way.

If you catch him, give him to a mantis safe LFS to redistribute or something. If you kill him, just don't tell me about it There are plenty of people like me on 3reef who keep mantis in species tanks.

 

The way I got rid of mine was when I saw which rock he was hiding in I quickly removed the rock, put it in a bucket and flushed him out. this way he is alive and you can give him to someone. If you just want to kill him put the rock in RO water, he will fall out and die

 

Yeppers

If people knew how many reef tanks have mantis, they would be shocked.

 

Predators include: Bird Wrasses and large Dottybacks. However, you do take the risk of these predators eating other crutaceans. You can try this method - If you can identify the rock the shrimp lives in, remove the rock from the tank and try extracting the shrimp from its hole by poking a skewer, flexible pipe or a strong wire into the hole forcing the shrimp to come out. It will usually come out of another hole. Or, remove the rock (lair) and place it in a bucket of water and pour carbonated mineral water into the hole. Either technique should encourage the shrimp to leave its lair. Good Luck!

john1948

 

In all honesty, I would be thrilled to find a mantis in my tank. I don't know why people want to kill them all the time.
If the LFS wont take it there's always Craigslist.

 

What inwall and swagger said. I saw the title of this thread and thought "Lucky!", but then I read further.

An LFS of ours uses FL Live rock, so mantis are very common with them (my first mantis was a hitchhiker on some of their rock a local bought for his reef, he saw the mantis, caught her, and then she was sold to me through another LFS as an assorted hermit crab). They have 3 main display reef tanks, as well as a smaller frag tank. Each tank I mentioned has a mantis living in it. One is a fully grown Caribbean Rock mantis who lives in the PVC that's holding up a larger powerhead at the front of their largest display tank. Another is a smaller bright green fellow living in the frag tank, and he isn't shy at all. He crawls around on the eggcrate shelves like they're a jungle gym. They store has another half dozen in their ginormous rock tank in the back room. Apparently, as they find and catch the mantis in their shipments, they just stick them in that tank.

So I urge you to try your best not to kill it. It wouldn't be the end of the world if you did, but that's a perfectly good medium sized mantis right there. If you have a small empty tank somewhere, set it up for him/her. You'd be surprised at how awesome they are.