Gonodactylaceus Ternatensis Habitat?

I

Islandoftiki

New member
So, I rescued what was believed to be a 3.5" peacock mantis from a local reefer's sump this weekend.

Well, turns out, he's not a Peacock, but a male Gonodactylaceus Ternatensis.

So, I got my 7.5 gallon majano propagation tank all set up to temporarily house a peacock mantis, complete with a u-shaped piece of grey PVC tubing for a home.

But, since it isn't actually a Peacock, will the same U-Shaped tube be an appropriate home for a Gonodactylaceus Ternatensis? I understand that they tend to make their homes in SPS corals.

Should I give him something different to live in? He's currently just hiding in the back of the tank and hasn't ventured out much yet. It's only been a day.
 
I guess I knew the answer already, but thank you for confirming what I had already figured. I also gave him a good amount of live rock rubble to do with as he pleases.

I assume he'll take a week or two like my little mantis did when I first introduced him to his tank.

He's already a lot more brave than my little one was. He was happy to eat last night.
 
Go check out the PVC burrows that Kharn is making now for his mantis. Once you get your bigger tank you could make something like this with the emphasis on keeping the caves up in the water column and that should work for a good home. But luckily you have a very adaptive mantis and you temp set up should do just fine for the time being. Lol Just watched the video looking good.
 
Well, he found a nice hole in the live rock. I didn't think he'd fit in there, but he does...

Mymantis.jpg
 
And he's cute as a button, too! He has spent one year lost in the sump of a 120 gallon tank and another year in the fuge of a 90 gallon tank. Considering what he's been through, he's in pretty good shape with only a small amount of damage to his left uropods.

We fed him again last night and he was extremely curious. He continued to play with the chopstick even while he was eating. My fiance is super excited about him. She thought he should have some toys to play with. Lol. She wanted me to bring the temporary tank upstairs. She can't wait for his permanent tank to arrive and get set up.

Any suggestions for housing/rockscape/substrate for this particular guy that he might prefer?

I was figuring live rock with lots of mantis sized holes in it, and a medium-coarse aragonite substrate. Probably don't need to build any PVC tube homes for him, I'd guess.

Also, lighting. I see some accounts of shell disease with these guys. Should I treat him more like a peacock with no lights, or just go easy on the lighting and make it a lower light softie/pest tank? Roy's list suggests they come from shallower brightly lit areas, so I'm a little confused about what would be best.
 
re:Island

re:Island

I agree that if he is already choosing to live in the LR, you should just go with that. Although, it seems that most mantis keepers swear by PVC tubing as the best home. I think it just depends on the quality of LR that you have available to you (i.e. how big, how many mantis-sized cavities, etc...).

In other words, if all the LFS has is big rocks with few cavities, you might want to get some PVC tubing. That's what I'm about to do with mine because my mantis apparently isn't much of a digger and the cavities in the LR aren't big enough for him. The pet stores in my area have a rather poor selection of LR.

As far as lighting, your species is not as susceptible to shell rot as a Peacock, but I think that intense lights all the time *could* still cause problems for him. I usually just keep my lights off unless I'm watching him. Do whatever works for you though, just keep an eye on him to see how the light affects his health. Good luck!
 
+1 to everything nmotz said.

I want to add that with my peacock I did have pvc, but with my smithii I never once gave it the PVC. That mantis was an incredible digger/miner. It dug holes in every rock in the tanks it was in. But the thing that still blows my mind is that I had a plastic animal skull in the tank that quickly got covered by coralline. In the base of the skull was a small hole to let the air out of it when adding it to the tank. my Smithii dug under the skull found this hole and opened it up climbed in and broke a hole out of the front of the skull along one of the nostrils. This added a battle damage look to the skull and in this my mantis took up residence for the next 3.5 to 4 years of its life. The mantis would enlarge the front hole as it grew and would break up snail shells to use as doors blocking off the front hole. The hole in the base of the skull got big enough to place the skull up on a cool shaped piece of tunga branch LR and made for a spine to hold up the skull in the water column. I moved this skull around a lot to my liking also so I could look into the hole and see the mantis when it was not being friendly. No matter where I moved that skull the mantis would find it, it was its home.

Also along the lines of what was said about large boulder LR, go down to home depot and buy a drill and some auger bits. With these you can drill holes in the rock. Its way simpler then you’d think to do this. Don’t be scared of drilling rock. Worsted case scenario, and I do mean worst case, you break the rock and end up with rubble, but mantis love rubble. So its win win.
 
I'm amazed what my little black (Maybe G. Viridis) mantis has done in the pest tank. He's quite the engineer. He completely revamped the live rock, hollowed out an existing cavity, created a new entrance and exit and blocked off the original 1/2" hole in the rock with rubble and the shattered remains of dwarf cerith snail shells. The filled-in hole is actually very structurally sound and would be hard to open back up without a screwdriver or a chisel.

The G. Ternatensis seems pretty happy in the little hole he found. It has an entrance and an exit. I expect in time he will make himself more comfortable and do some home renovation like my little black one did after a couple weeks.

I have him lots of rubble to work with. If he's still hanging out in that rock when I get the 25 up and cycled, I'll bring his favorite rock over with him into the new tank.
 
i have a male and female g.t and they bolth seem to prefer very holy or densly branched rock like the pukini dry rock that brs sells, they don't dig much at all except when their looking for nasarius snails wich is a learned behaviour becouse i feed them alot of them. my female has also made a home in between the plates of a large capricornis coral stufing it with rocks,shells macro algie and small coral frags to build walls.
bolth my g.t's are in well lit(sps capable led's) tanks for over a year now and the only incidense of shell rot i've had was when i got them bolth after being lost in the mail for three days the female developed shell rot about a weak after i got her and molted three weaks later and it was gone with no sign of return since, i believe this was the result of stress from shipping not lighting
 
gpx1200 said:
i have a male and female g.t and they bolth seem to prefer very holy or densly branched rock like the pukini dry rock that brs sells, they don't dig much at all except when their looking for nasarius snails wich is a learned behaviour becouse i feed them alot of them. my female has also made a home in between the plates of a large capricornis coral stufing it with rocks,shells macro algie and small coral frags to build walls.
bolth my g.t's are in well lit(sps capable led's) tanks for over a year now and the only incidense of shell rot i've had was when i got them bolth after being lost in the mail for three days the female developed shell rot about a weak after i got her and molted three weaks later and it was gone with no sign of return since, i believe this was the result of stress from shipping not lighting
Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll take that into account when I setup the rockscape the permanent tank.

Until then, he seems happy and comfortable.

I gave him a small snack of mysis shrimp before bed time tonight.
 
re:Island

re:Island

About what size is he and what diameter is the PVC pipe? I'm going to get some PVC pipe this week and am debating on what size, type, etc. I definitely want to get a U-bend, but I also want it to look nice in the tank buried underneath the substrate and LR.

Also, is there any special way to prepare PVC pipe for entry into the tank? I was planning on washing it down with white vinegar then rinsing it with tap water. Is that sufficient or do you need to soak it in saltwater or anything like that?
 
Your good with vinegar.

The Doc said one time the pvc should be small enough that the mantis can touch all sides of the inside diameter. Hope that help you pick the size
 
This mantis is about the diameter of my thumb and 3.5" - 4" in length.

I got a piece of PVC with the inside diameter for my thumb to fit with about 1/8" extra.

This is what I built:

DB8B8991-orig.jpg


But since he isn't a peacock, I'm not sure he cares that it's U-Shaped. This is also temporary, so I wasn't too worried about aesthetics.

I washed it all down with vinegar and used a bottle brush on the inside, then rinsed it thoroughly.

For my little tiny mantis, I coated the visible part of the tube with epoxy and rolled in aragonite sand to hide the PVC. I would also then recommend gluing some rocks around it to hide the obviously circular opening and give it a more natural irregular shape. I didn't do that on this one and it has less of a natural look than I would have hoped. I'm going to try to get some GSP or other type type of soft coral to grow around it to hid it better.

252F29C8.jpg


FE3E2E0D.jpg


He uses that tube sometimes, but he also built a more extensive system of tunnels in the live rock that he uses more than the tube.
 
If the rocks are good then having the cave just gives one more thing to explore so I don't see a down side to leaving it. Thumbs up on your creativity. Tank looks like a great home for it.
 
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