re: #339 prononymous

I had a mantis shrimp named thumper for several years. He (she?) was an incredibly fascinating critter, and frighteningly intelligent. He hitched a ride into my reef tank on a piece of live rock, and took me a few weeks to devise a trap to catch him. So, I set up a little 20 gallon tank just for him, where he lived on a diet of shrimp and snails.

It’s a bit of a spooky feeling to walk past a tank with a mantis shrimp in it, only to realize that it is tracking you with it’s little eyes, watching you as you walk past his tank. After a couple of months, he learned what it meant when I would open my fridge (visible from the tank) to pull out a frozen shrimp to feed him. Every time I opened my fridge, he would start darting around the tank excitedly. He knew it was feeding time.