Appropriate tank/filter?

[JohnnyMantis]

I am going to start puting a system together for a Mantis and was wondering if a tank with 30" x 12Ã"šÃ‚½" x 17" dimensions would be appropriate. What kind of filtering system would work, also are there any special lighing requirements?

 

[Crawling68]

That size tank should be plenty for the average mantis. I see you just got into SW. Most of the same principles of your 175 should be applied to the smaller tank. The exception would be to lighting and flow. The brighter the lights, the less your gonna see him. Same goes with flow, mantis dont have swim bladders, so if there is tons of flow, hes probably just going to hide all day long. HTH.

 

[poopsko24]

I got mine in a 15 gallon, nice and a little wider for him. I put on an aquaclear hang on , and I dont' use the ceramic media, but I do use the carbon bag and the sponge it comes with. I use LR for my filtration. I light the LR with 2x65w PC's . put a heater in there also, I got the aquaclear thats rated for like 75 gallons, its really not that much flow for him at all. I really dont know what they think will stay healty with that filter rated at 75 gallons .....more like 30 if you ask me.

 

[Absint Reefer]

I also use a hang on filter on my mantis tank you just have to make sure they eat all of what the broke into pieces

 

[tinypieceofkrill]

I think it depends on the type of mantis you get. I have Gonodactylus platysoma. In the wild mine lives in shallow water, and he only comes out when the lights are on. He has 36W of PC over his tank. Roy's list has him as intertidal and I have probably about 80-100GHP going into his 10G tank. He is out a lot during the day and he smashes the live rock (to build a home I guess) just after lights go out. For filtration his tank is tied in with a couple other tanks totaling 125G. The only filtration is live rock and a protein skimmer. Just research the type of mantis you plan to get.