re: #355 prononymous

Hehe.

re: #345 Fozzie Bear

Yeah, I’m really sad that most aquarium owners consider Mantis Shrimp to be pests. Though that’s probably because most of them have their first experience with the shrimp when fish and invertebrates start to mysteriously go missing one by one.

Really though, mantis shrimp are some of the most awesome predators on earth. Those raptorial appendages having the force of a .22 caliber bullet in some species. The eyes being able to see in an incredible variety of ways including polarized light and 3d in a single eye. And they are smart. Informal experiments on my part seem to indicate that they can actually distinguish between individual humans (the one that feeds them being their favorite, lol).

They absolutely can. When my wife opens the fridge, he doesn’t respond, at all. She has never fed him. (She’s terrified to put her hand anywhere near the tank after seeing what he can do to a snail) The interesting thing is, he never made any attempt to attack my hand. He kept a wide berth when I cleaned the tank, but he would watch my hand like a hawk the whole time I was in there. Feeding was done by sticking his shrimp on the end of a skewer and holding it just outside the entrance to one of his many burrows. He would just reach out and grab it. As for his snail treats, well, he would just relentlessly smash the crap out of them until the shell was in little pieces.

They definitely are a huge problem in a reef tank. (well, they don’t bother the corals, but anything that moves on its own, they will kill) But, in a tank by themselves (or with only sessile invertebrates) they are every bit as cool as any of the corals, imo.