Adopted a Hitch hiking Mantis

it could be a spearer and could have just burried it self. just a thought. im still ding research to find the right one for me.

 

Iodine is a huge no-no with mantis

The vast majority of LR hitch hikers are N. Wennerae as Curt said. Actually, mine was on the 1/2" side of 3/4" long when we first got her. She was tiny. And as my mom said, they molt in "spurts" kind of like growth spurts. She was molting maybe 2 times a month at one point, and was definitely larger each time. Molts are creepy though, because they vanish for days at a time. Now she hasn't molted in quite some time, but is in the adult stage of her life.

I did what you were planning on doing. Adding rock as it grew. I started with about 2 or 3 pounds of rock, and then when she was about 1.5" long I added some more. Now the count is up to about 7 or 8 pounds. But 3 of those pounds will be going to my mom's tank soon...

We fed either a small piece of krill or a whole mysis every other day. They will toss out whatever they don't eat, so if you have fish in the tank they might take care of that. Now we feed her maybe 1/3 of a full krill every other day, which equates to about 1 krill per week (spreading it out of a couple of days eases up on the waste from leftovers getting tossed). 1 krill a week is the general rule of thumb for smaller 2-3" mantis. I believe it's the rule of thumb stepho goes by for Mr. Fister as well.

 

nice find!, most i had for a hitchhiker where 2 turbo snails they where hidden on my LR I purchased from the LFS.

 

Haha we had a mexican turbo and another snail thing hitch hike from the LFS. They even survived our tank's cycle. However, now they are long dead and the only thing we have to remember them by is the giant of a blue hermit crab that runs around in the Mexican Turbo's shell. It used to make me sad seeing a crab run around the tank in his shell, but when I remembered the smell of a dead turbo snail (even in the water, this snail stank the tank like a fat guy on free burrito happy hour) and I wasn't sad anymore.