Smrimp from H@!L

[CherubAngel]

Someone please help me. I recently purchased a new very large piece of LR, and shorty after placing it in my tank, I saw the most horribly ugly shrimp I have ever seen. My tank is now the home of a dreaded mantis shrimp. How do I get rid of this thing, I have read on some home made traps, but none have pictures and I can't quite seem to make the directions out enough to do it myself. Since its been in there, over half of my hermit population is gone. Also, will it hurt any of my corals??
Please help me.
Jill D.

 

[Boogiechillin]

There are some commercial traps out there that you can try, such as:
http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod_Display.cfm?siteid=6&pCatId=3964

Alternatively, you can make traps of your own out of clean 2-liter soda bottles by cutting them in half and burying them in the substrate so that they form a funnel trap with the rim flush with the substrate. Feed the fish before you place the traps, and then bait the traps with a little shrimp or krill. Most undesirable critters can't crawl or adequately swim up the smooth sides.

You can also dunk the rock in a bucket of freshwater or hypersaline water. This will drive the mantis to "abandon ship" and try to swim away into the bucket, allowing you to remove the rock and dispose of the shrimp. However, you will likely kill/damage a lot of the other, desirable life on the rock, so I tend to think of this as a last resort option.

 

[OrionGirl]

If you know the hole where the mantis lives, rather than dunking the entire rock you can use a baster to squirt fresh water into the hole (while holding the rock over the bucket, or setting it inside the bucket). The mantis will make a speedy get away, out of the rock, without exposing the entire rock to the FW. Worked for us, and I've seen my LFS use the same method successfully.