algae control in a mantis tank

[Blue Heeling]

visiting my lfs last night & found a mantis in their coral tank. rather than letting them kill it, i asked for it & set up an old 10 gal. tank i had up in the attic. i put in a sand bed & added a few pieces of live rock rubble from my other tank. i used 5 gal of water from my existing tank & added 5 gallons of fresh saltwater. now, before i get flamed, i openly admit that i jumped into this quick, but if i hadn't, this little guy/gal would be dead now. I WANT TO DO THIS RIGHT & I'M ASKING FOR HELP. right now all i have for circulation is a trickle filter & when i finish this post, i'm going to get a skimmer. i have some extra pumps around but wanted to know what kind of flow to achieve (10x?). also, what do you do for algae control? do you use snails & replace them as they get eaten? i thought about an urchin but didn't know if it would try to kill it even though it's venomous. any advice would be much appreciated.

thanks in advance,
jeff

ps: it's a mello yellow green hammerrer

 

[Fcamdog]

Keep it like any other saltwater tank. I have a Prism skimmer and Maxi-Jet 400 on a 20g that houses a mantis. Mine is a spearer so I don't have to worry about hermits and snails getting eaten. With a skimmer on the tank I would suggest just going with some macro algea for nutrient export. A mantis being a predator you'll need weekly water changes to help keep the tank from crashing. Hope that helps.