How to Trap a Mantis

[piglet]

From the website : http://www.blueboard.com/mantis/pest/catch.htm

{by Web Site Author: A. San Juan 1998. }

Methods for Capturing Within the Tank:

Use live bait to lure it out, then use nets to capture it. This is the simplest technique, and yet may be the least reliable, especially given the keen eyesight and quickness of many of the smaller mantis shrimps. Also, I find them to be extremely cautious creatures, and if there are hiding places around, it will be very difficult to catch them unawares and vulnerable to simple nets.

Use home-made traps to capture the mantis shrimp. One enterprising soul made a funnel-type apparatus by cutting out the top half of a small clear plastic bottle close to where the gradual slope turns to a straight line. He then inserted the top part into the lower half in an inverted position, and secured the whole apparatus by tying a fishing line around the neck of the top half and through a hole in the bottom. A piece of shrimp was secured inside the trap to serve as bait.

Here's a page with a similar home-made trap:

http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Han...ntisShrimp.html

The Prairie Dog "Suction" Method

This is surely one of the more novel methods of capturing mantis shrimps, and involves the use of a suction to trap the critter. The exact location of the mantis shrimp's home cavity must first be determined, and the hose of a strong filter is then secured tightly over the hole. The system is left to run overnight, and the stomatopod is invariably found trapped inside the filter when morning comes. The contributor has been successful all three times he used this method, and has the stomatopod "trophies" on his wall to prove it. In order to work, the mantis shrimp must be of a manageable size, the location of its hole must be precisely determined, and there must not be any other escape routes within the rock.

The Scissor Method

If you've got the reflexes and "guts" to go mano a mano against the mantis shrimps, then this is for you. On the serious side, I would caution that mantis shrimps display a relatively high degree of behavioral plasticity, and the very aggressive behavior of the mantis in the story may not be applicable to other mantis individuals. For example, the large mantises I maintain do not charge out when I start poking into the insides of their cavities. Instead, they just keep hammering at the intruding object.

Use competing animals to control or remove the mantis shrimp. This is much more troublesome and less reliable than using traps, and may involve the temporary removal of other inhabitants out of the container. Unless the competing creature is significantly larger than the mantis shrimp, there's every chance that you're going to lose it instead. These are not recommended methods for mantis shrimp removal.

Trigger fishes- you will need to make sure all the other remaining inhabitants are compatible with the trigger you use (much larger or with a very dissimilar shape), or else remove all other potential snacks before introducing undulate triggers or the like. Although this is a relatively common method of getting rid of the smaller mantis shrimps (LFS regularly drop their "dazed" caught stomatopods -- frequently the very small Gonodactylus spp, into Triggerfish tanks), larger critters are another matter entirely. Large Odontodactylus scyllarus, for example, will be able to handle these fishes with ease......according to Dr. Roy Caldwell, a wholesaler once offered him a couple of Odontodactylus scyllarus after they had killed 6 Clown Triggers in a single night.

Octopuses- remove potential prey, then introduce borrowed, rented, or bought octopus into tank. Make sure there are no relatively large openings or the thing will easily escape and wander around your kitchen at night in search of food. The size thing goes here as well. Large mantis shrimps will gladly eat smaller octopi.

Pistol shrimps- these clicking shrimps supposedly compete for cavities with the mantis shrimps. The good thing about using these animals is that they are relatively harmless to other inhabitants of the tank, unlike the two above. The bad thing is that I very much doubt this will work. I've seen pistols jostling against other pistols in TV, and their claws do seem to be effective weapons. But I've also seen mantis shrimps easily handle large crayfishes, who sport equally massive pincers, and these contests weren't even close.

Sally Lightfoot Crabs- someone mentioned this in a newsgroup, someone disagreed. I would bet on the mantis if they were around the same size (heck, i would bet on the mantis if the crab were twice its size).

Hawk Fishes- maybe, maybe not. An aquarist in a ng reported that a 3 inch fish ate a 1.5 inch mantis shrimp, although he did not actually see the thing happening.

A reader mentioned that Moray Eels with molar like teath such as the Snowflake or Zebra moray will eliminate stray mantis shrimp within a week. He keeps a pair of snowflakes in the curing tank and notes that he has never gotten any mantis shrimp on the rock after curing.

Methods to Capture Mantis Shrimp Outside Tank:

If you can quickly remove the rock where the offending mantis shrimp is hiding, then you can isolate the animal using the following methods.

Replace rock in its own, isolated tank with saltwater. Do not provide sources of food for several days, then trap mantis using bait.

Dunk rock quickly in carbonated water. You may use club soda or make your own liquid by mixing dry ice and saltwater. The mantis shrimp will quickly scoot out of the rock when exposed to this.

Squirt boiling or hot water into the cavities where mantis shrimps may be hiding. This has been suggested to me by retailers of local fishing stores as well.

Dunk rock in freshwater. Some people say they have used this to good effect, but others note that it could severely damage the other inhabitants of the live rock.

{by Web Site Author: A. San Juan 1998. }

[piglet]

wedsite : http://www.blueboard.com/mantis/logs/040998.htm

by Nathan Cope. Perth, Western Australia.

Editor's Note: Here's an extremely novel method of mantis control, one that calls to mind the saying "curiosity killed the cat."

The Scissor Method

I have had considerable experience with attempting to catch Mantis and a little bit of experience with intentionally keeping them. They are absolutely amazing, no other word for them! The two that I have at the moment wouldn't be any longer than an inch (they are in a tank separate from my main tank), but they can come completely out of their holes in the rock, go 9 cm (4 in) to a piece of food and back to their hole faster than I can move my eyes to see it. I saw all this occur out of the corner of my eye and by the time I realised what was happening and flicked my eyes to look, the Mantis was back in its hole. They are literally that fast, I am not exaggerating! The hole doesn't appear to be much wider than the Mantis itself, but it can back into the hole at high speed without the slightest fumble. BTW, this dash involved moving in a straight line from a hole about 7 cm (3 in) up from the substrate in a spherical shaped rock directly to some food sitting on the substrate. Most of the journey was through the water without even touching the rock or the substrate...proving that they are definitely strong swimmers.

As far as catching them goes, well, I once had a 7 cm (3 in) shrimp in my main tank and it was killing all my crustaceans, plenty of snails and the occasional fish. I tried many methods to capture it, but I didn't have an actual mantis trap. This was a very colourful smasher type mantis. I was never able to identify it.

It started out about 25 mm (1 in) long but grew to 7 cm (3 in) over the 6 months that I had it. I tried trapping it and plugging it's hole (had a back entrance that I didn't know about, of course). I even tried shoving a bamboo skewer down its hole in an attempt to kill it, but nothing worked.

In the end, I decided to try the scissors technique. I'm not into killing things and this was the last option I was willing to try just before pulling my whole rockwork down to remove the rock that it lived in. Even then, I wasn't sure that the mantis would still be in the rock by the time I removed it. Just as an aside, one of the major reasons I was reluctant to pull the rockwork apart was because it was all cable-tied together.

Anyway, I opened the scissors around the mouth of the hole with my right hand (I'm right-handed and I wanted to be quick and accurate with this technique) and poked a bamboo skewer down the hole with the other hand. The skewer always made the mantis come running. It poked it's head out and looked around at the scissors, but wouldn't come a long way out. I kept teasing it with the skewer until eventually a 1/3 of the mantis was out of the hole. As quick as I could, I snapped the scissors shut...and totally missed the mantis.

I thought that I wouldn't have a hope now that the mantis had seen what I had in store for it, but sure enough after a bit more poking with the skewer, the mantis started to come out of the hole again. This time, I waited until the mantis was half way out and again I quickly snapped the scissors shut. This time I got the mantis just in front of the junction between the cephalothorax and the abdomen. The cephalothorax fell to the rock and didn't move, but the abdomen shot off down the hole (I never found that bit).

I felt a deep sense of remorse for having murdered this animal. I was only consoled by the fact that I would be stopping it from killing other animals in my tank that were unable to move to a safer area like they would be able to in the wild

by Nathan Cope

[ah^siao]

i spent less than 5 minutes thinking on how to catch a mantis and i took another 5 to catch it out...

[zorden]

i spent less than 5 minutes thinking on how to catch a mantis and i took another 5 to catch it out...

wow...that fast......

[RAV-65]

i spent less than 5 minutes thinking on how to catch a mantis and i took another 5 to catch it out...

care to share bro? or u took out the whole rock?

[ah^siao]

i just took a metre long of stiff wire.. slowly just lure it to the open.. then poke it thru the body.. move it to the edge use scissors to cut it into half..

[piglet]

bro ah^siao....

swore to take vengeance on that mantis.

[typrobin]

i just took a metre long of stiff wire.. slowly just lure it to the open.. then poke it thru the body.. move it to the edge use scissors to cut it into half..

lure it with wat??

[ah^siao]

with the wire itself.. i nv on any lights..

[marinecraz]

i just took a metre long of stiff wire.. slowly just lure it to the open.. then poke it thru the body.. move it to the edge use scissors to cut it into half..

wow, yi dao jian xue....