How do I gewt rid of a mantis shrimp?
 

I am pretty sure I have a mantis in my tank, I have been loosing snail and hermits for some time now and I hear a clicking sound every once and a while. Are there traps? I have a 90 gallon reef tank and I can't take it apart to find it?

do these things come out at night?

Thanks, Chris

YEs they do. The best way to catpure one is a manual trap. sometimes the X-terminators are for big mantis shrimp and the small hitchhiker will NOt activate the trap. try some brine in the trap and wait. When it goes in close the lever manually and there you go your mantis. IT might take a while though, it is easier if you find his/her hole. I am willing to take it off your back after...

my fave method is the bottle trap, a simple enough device often hailed as the best method… if you can get it to work. Just get a simple water bottle (water bottle only please, not pop or anything that has ever had soap in it) and cut off the top third (the tapering bit with the mouthpiece). If the mouthpiece is too small cut it so that the mantis can get through it (don’t overdo it though). Invert it and stick it in the bottom two thirds. If it won’t stay, you can glue or tape it. Next, tie a string around the whole thing; this will be used to remove the trap and to attach a rock to make the trap sink. Bait the trap with any fleshy marine food like krill or silverside; I wouldn’t use bivalve meat like clam or scallop since those decompose faster. Now place the trap in the tank for the duration of the day (mantids are diurnal).
There are some tricks to this method. Mantids will make a burrow in the rock so if you can find the burrow, place the trap so the opening is close and facing the borrow entrance. The second trick is patience: this might take a while, so remove and replace uneaten bait with fresh bait every day. Third trick is go away. I am serious, get in the car and take a trip to the lfs, walk the dog, just don’t let anyone near the tank for at least eight hours. And lastly, don’t feed the tank for a while. The point is the make the mantis hungry enough to go get the food in the trap.

When you say you're losing hermits and snails, do you actually find their broken shells?

the majority of mantids are diurnal. not nocturnal. the trap will work best during the day.

I have never seen a mantis in the tank I just hear noises and I have a lot of empty shells, not so much broken ones in the tank. I am guessing that it may be a mantis that hitch hiked in on a coral. But I would think I would haveseen it by now. I don't know what else could be eating the hermits/snails I don't really have anything in the tank that I thought would eat them.

anyone have a picture of the bottle trap I could see?

Thanks, Chris

hmm... might not be a mantis then. theres actually quite a few possibilities for clicking things. notably mantis and pistol shrimp. the non-broken shells tell me that it likely isnt a mantis. do the clicks happen at night, day or randomly?

The other possibility is, There is thi crab I have seen in there. It is pink with brown pincers ( about 1 1/2" diameter) and it also has some brown spots on it.
I have been trying to catch it but haven't been able to get it yet. I almost had it today but it got away. But I didn't think crabs made clicking sounds.

Chris

THen it is a pistol shrimp... look for broken shells and is there is some, it is highly probable that it is a mantis.

I was reading this thread and it got me wondering about my tank. I have had many fish come up missing and have tons of empty snail shells lying around. Once in a while soon after the lights go out at night I will hear a clicking sound. Could I have a mantis shrimp? My tank has been up for years and I have never seen one or a molt from one. I have several peppermint shrimp and a pearly jawfish that have been untouched. What do yo think?

Thanks

Joe

Alot of the time the clicking sounds you hear in your tanks are hermits and snails bumping their shells on the glass or rocks. I watched one of my tanks for hours trying to figure out where the clicking I was hering was coming from. After a while i noticed that every time I heard the clicks a hermit was walking into the walls of the tank.

If you dont have any broken shells its probably not a mantis. If you have hermits in the tank its probably a safe bet that the hermits are killing and eating your snails.


Joe - same goes for your tank, when you turn the lights out some hermits become active or make a mad dash for cover bumping into the sides of the tank in the process... Missing fish could be from poor water conditions or sick fish. Not finding its body wouldnt be a surprise depending on how many snails/hermits/other fish and other scavengers you have. I lost a hippo tang over night and I never found its corpse because it had been eaten by the oher livestock in my tank.

Hmmm, I know that I don't have poor water conditions and none of my fish ever looked sick, they just vanished overnight. I agree with the hermit crabs eating the snails but something nasty has got to be getting my fish. What about an emerald crab? Once I saw one in the tank about the size of a golf ball, would that eat smaller fish?

I tempted the Pink crab with some fish meat and he went for it but I was unable to get him out of the tank. I will try again in a couple of days. By the way he devoured the fish meat I am sure he could take out a small fish. I need to get that thing out of there. I will try to get a picture of him!

Chris

Jetdrvr - Crabs are opportunistic feederf, if it can get its claws on flesh its a sure bet it will eat it. However it isnt very likely that a crab is catching your fish and eating them. How long were the fish in your tank before the vanished? What kinds of fish do you have in there and what kinds were dieing, perhaps they were being killed by another fish and eaten by the crabs...

Chris - next time you bate the crab try putting the meat in a net so that he has to crawl into the net to get the meat, then just pull it out. But as I told Jet, I doubt a crab can catch a live, healthy fish. Something must have happened to the fish first...injured by another fish or it was sick...something.

The fish that have vanished were there for various lengths of time. There are no predatory fish in my tank, I have:
Yellow Tang
Sailfin Tang
Madarin Goby
Pearly Jawfish
Firefish Goby
Candied Hogfish
8 Green Chromis (started with 18)
Tomato Clown
3 Peppermint shrimp

The fish showed no signs of sickness, I have great water quality (thriving SPS).

I have checked the tank at night and not seen anything nasty.

Hmm, dunno what to tell you...i dont see anything there that would be agressive. But I hat a Copperband Butterfly up and die on me for reasons I couldnt figure out...some times it happens.

Just keep your eyes on the tank, maby set up a trap, and see what happens...

Heres the little monster!
 

Well I couldn't take it anymore, I bought a nice basslet today and it seemed like it was doing pretty good, so I left for a few Hours and when I came home, there was no sign of it!! No remanes no nothing!! I looked all around the tank, even though it is sealed up pretty good, just in case it jumped out, I looked in the overflow, even though it has a cover over it to prevent anything from jumping in, And nothing no where!
So I found where the little crab was hiding and decided it ws him or me!!
So I took almost the whole tank apart to get the rock out he was hiding in, took it out of the tank and fished the little menace out of the rock onto the floor!!
I attached a picture if it worked right

[url]http://i248.photobucket.com/albums/gg197/moparcolt/DSC04850.jpg[/url]

anyone know what kind of crab this is?

Looks like a gorilla crab. Definitely not reef safe. Never had one, but from what I've read, they will just about anything they can get their claws on: fish, anemones, clams, etc.