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mantis shrimp - food?

I just returned from northern Queensland where I was able to collect several A. aculeatus. One was in the act of preying on a large (7 cm) Gonodactylus smithii) which it had bitten and was holding, but which was not yet dead. Stomatopods make up a substantial part of the diet of my octopus species - and many stomatopods eat octopus. As usual, it all has to do with relative size.

Roy
 
stomatopods are SO cool! i'd like a peacock spec. tank, but i guess it has to be made of steel or maybe adamantium or somthing... anybody knows what size of tank could hold an animal like that?
 
A friend of mine did an internship at the Smithsonian, sorting whale stomach contents (thank goodness that wasn't my first marine bio project... doubt I would be here! She's in med school now :roll:). Among the hundreds of ceph beaks, in many whale stomachs (sorry, I can't remember what species), she would find the remains of one - and only ever one - stomatopod.
 
Tintenfisch;102162 said:
A friend of mine did an internship at the Smithsonian, sorting whale stomach contents (thank goodness that wasn't my first marine bio project... doubt I would be here! She's in med school now :roll:). Among the hundreds of ceph beaks, in many whale stomachs (sorry, I can't remember what species), she would find the remains of one - and only ever one - stomatopod.

Hmm, any theory as to why just one?

Taste bad? :yuck:
 
No theories with any scientific merit :wink:, but we speculated on potential damage done to a whale's mouth/throat by an angry stomatopod in mid-swallow... steep learning curve or maybe too late??
 
Tintenfisch;102169 said:
No theories with any scientific merit :wink:, but we speculated on potential damage done to a whale's mouth/throat by an angry stomatopod in mid-swallow... steep learning curve or maybe too late??

Hah, cool, that was my other idea... would be like swallowing a razor blade. Then again, wouldn't the same be said for hooked squid tentacles? Perhaps by the time they're in the mouth they aren't latching onto any internal surfaces... but I think that's a valid hazard to consider when eating live octopus... that the arms can latch on and choke a person, so I would think the same of a squid, and much more so with the hooks.
 
Animal Mother;102012 said:
Mantis Shrimp are evil.

This is obviously an old thread and was before my time here... but uh, AM? I currently have three mantis shrimp who are convinced that YOU'RE the evil one! :wink:

Now that I've found this thread, I feel the need to share...

In order of appearance:
Michelle (H. glyptocercus)
Jackie (G. smithii)
Elvira (O. latirostris)
 
Hehe. I'd keep one. They're just wicked. I'm convinced we have or at least had one in our 60 gallon seahorse tank. We heard popping occasionally for a long time. Usually several over just a few seconds. We noticed our small snail population is 0. All the really big ones are fine. Emerald crabs disappeared. Surprisingly the peppermint shrimp are fine though so that throws me off. There's a very large piece of rock in the back (25-30lbs) full of holes and another 30lbs in front of that so moving the rock is a bit of a hassle or I already would have gone searching for the source of the popping.

We moved all the horses and fish over to the new big tank and haven't heard much snapping since. Except for the pistol in the new tank, and that makes a different, louder "pop", and always only one pop.
 
esquid;119961 said:
Elvira is pretty! How big is she?

She's about 2.5" inches now.

Octavarium;119965 said:
I just saw a beautiful 4" peacock and 6" zebra mantis at my LFS, I was contemplating for a while putting them into my recently empty 29.

Mixing mantis isn't advised. The peacock in a 29 would work, but the zebra is going to need a larger tank and a very deep sandbed to burrow.
 
Oh no I wan't contempating mixing lol. Just one or the other. I can only imagine the brutal wars that would ensue. Because of the size of both I would actually be nervous about them breaking the glass when digging, which would flood right onto my bed, and maybe me when I was sleeping since its right by the side of my bed!
 

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