gholland
New member
Just wanted to consolidate all the accounts of my girl, Elvira, in one place for the benefit of myself and others (kinda like DensityMan did with Tim Supermantis), along with my tank specs and mods for those who are seeking info...
First off, my setup:
Elvira lives in a 14 gallon Oceanic Biocube. I have removed the stock filter cartridge completely and use a nylon filter bag 1/4 full of carbon draped over the drip tray in the back instead. This greatly improves the surface skimming and particulate filtration over the stock arrangement. Although I still have a few of the stock bioballs, most of the middle chamber in back is filled with liverock. This is a smaller tank with more liverock in the main tank than Dr. Roy's recommendations, but it's a very open arrangement with many arches and tunnels she can pass through and a still has a fair amount of sandy space with a 2" deep bed she can plow through. All that live rock just gives me piece-of-mind and keeps ammonia levels nil... very important since the O. latirostris are very sensitive to ammonia levels. I use several varieties of macro algae to keep my nitrates low too. So far, so good. I keep the 24W actinic on for about 14 hours a day and only turn the 24W 10k daylight on for 2-4 hours when I get home from work (for algae and corals).
Elvira arrived on 12/19/07 from the guys at stomatopod.com and I spent an hour drip-acclimating her before introducing her into her new home. She spent a while just staring at me before finally beginning to explore and I was thrilled to finally have a mantis that didn't immediately hide. She measured right at 2 inches in length.
Dr. Roy has warned that the smaller Odontodactylus species are very strong/fast swimmers and can jump several inches out of the water... and he is right. She went over the back wall the second day while I was at work and ended up in the drip tray. Fortunately, the water was just barely deep enough in there to cover her. As I lifted the tray to put her back in the tank, she jumped out and into the liverock and bioballs in the middle chamber. I practically freaked. After some very careful digging, I managed to pick her up (yes, by hand) and gently put her back in the main tank. I'm happy to report that neither of us was damaged in the process! I immediately went out and bought a sheet of 0.080 acrylic sheet and cut a piece to fit over the back chambers. I keep that sheet propped up a bit over the area where the water flows from the first chamber onto the filter/drip tray so that the water level doesn't contact the bottom of the acrylic sheet and prevent surface flow.
Elvira has a tendency to swim just as much as she crawls... very fast and very cool! I've seen her pounce gammrus amphipods, live saltwater mysis, live brine, and ghost shrimp. When I feed her ghost shrimp, they tend to swim around near the surface of the tank. Elvira will streak up to the top, pop the shrimp, and then streak back to her tunnel with it, only to pop up seconds later to eat it in front of me. She has whacked a few small hermit crabs and snails and carried them back to her tunnel, but then she always (with maybe one exception) ends up kicking them out, alive and well, several minutes later. I guess I need to try very small non-hermit crabs or a stomatella snails... I also feed her a mysis or two (soaked in vitachem) every 10-14 days. I try not to feed frozen food very often so that it will encourage her to hunt.
She's always funny to watch... She was walking past a pseudocorynactis (a ball-tip corallimorph, maybe 3/4" in diameter) one day and it stuck to her briefly before she jerked away. She tentatively touched it again, at which point it briefly stuck to her once more. She then proceeded to whack the crap out of it and dart back to her hole! She also likes to take out her frustration on rocks that are too big for her to swim (not roll) back to her doorway, whacking them repeatedly, presumably in an attempt to break them down into smaller pieces. One of the funniest things was when she picked up a piece of liverock almost as big as herself, swam the long way around the liverock and then dropped it above her doorway -- something like a dive-bomber... only she missed and a palythoa ended up with a mouth full of rock! On another occasion, she was just sitting at the entrance to her tunnel wrapped around that same paly... kinda like a she was hugging a big fuzzy teddy bear. Wish I'd gotten a photo of that!
Her tank-mates currently include: 3 nerite snails, 3 nassarius snails, 3 blue-leg hermits, zoas/palys, a cladiella (blanching) coral, several gorgonians, a yellow ball sponge, a red sponge with a commensal brittlestar living under it, a colony of tubastrea (sun corals), and of course, the pseudocorynactis. She doesn't bother the brittlestar but she has completely rearranged all of the palys and zoas that were on rocks small enough for her to move.
Her main tunnel (already existing in the liverock... not excavated by her) is about 1-1.5 inches in diameter and originally had three openings: one at ground level near the center of the tank, another near the middle of tunnel about an inch off the ground, and the third at the opposite end of the tunnel about two inches off the ground near the side of the tank where I sit. Apparently that was one opening too many as she has completely blocked off the middle one. The openings at each end of the tunnel are now surrounded by pieces of rubble which she uses to close the doorways at night.
She's definitely not shy, often not bothering to retreat even when I wipe the glass 2 inches in front of her, and she spends a lot of time watching me while I'm at the computer and will track my dogs and cats as the pass her tank. I've only read two other accounts from people who owned the species, but theirs seemed to be just as active and personable as mine. I wouldn't recommend them as a "first" mantis for someone, but if you are looking for an active and (perhaps more importantly) interactive mantis that doesn't get as large as the O. scyllarus (peacock) and if you can maintain the chemical stability and physical containment the species requires, then you might consider an Odontodactylus latirostris.
I'll continue to add to this journal as noteworthy experiences arise...
Greg
First off, my setup:
Elvira lives in a 14 gallon Oceanic Biocube. I have removed the stock filter cartridge completely and use a nylon filter bag 1/4 full of carbon draped over the drip tray in the back instead. This greatly improves the surface skimming and particulate filtration over the stock arrangement. Although I still have a few of the stock bioballs, most of the middle chamber in back is filled with liverock. This is a smaller tank with more liverock in the main tank than Dr. Roy's recommendations, but it's a very open arrangement with many arches and tunnels she can pass through and a still has a fair amount of sandy space with a 2" deep bed she can plow through. All that live rock just gives me piece-of-mind and keeps ammonia levels nil... very important since the O. latirostris are very sensitive to ammonia levels. I use several varieties of macro algae to keep my nitrates low too. So far, so good. I keep the 24W actinic on for about 14 hours a day and only turn the 24W 10k daylight on for 2-4 hours when I get home from work (for algae and corals).
Elvira arrived on 12/19/07 from the guys at stomatopod.com and I spent an hour drip-acclimating her before introducing her into her new home. She spent a while just staring at me before finally beginning to explore and I was thrilled to finally have a mantis that didn't immediately hide. She measured right at 2 inches in length.
Dr. Roy has warned that the smaller Odontodactylus species are very strong/fast swimmers and can jump several inches out of the water... and he is right. She went over the back wall the second day while I was at work and ended up in the drip tray. Fortunately, the water was just barely deep enough in there to cover her. As I lifted the tray to put her back in the tank, she jumped out and into the liverock and bioballs in the middle chamber. I practically freaked. After some very careful digging, I managed to pick her up (yes, by hand) and gently put her back in the main tank. I'm happy to report that neither of us was damaged in the process! I immediately went out and bought a sheet of 0.080 acrylic sheet and cut a piece to fit over the back chambers. I keep that sheet propped up a bit over the area where the water flows from the first chamber onto the filter/drip tray so that the water level doesn't contact the bottom of the acrylic sheet and prevent surface flow.
Elvira has a tendency to swim just as much as she crawls... very fast and very cool! I've seen her pounce gammrus amphipods, live saltwater mysis, live brine, and ghost shrimp. When I feed her ghost shrimp, they tend to swim around near the surface of the tank. Elvira will streak up to the top, pop the shrimp, and then streak back to her tunnel with it, only to pop up seconds later to eat it in front of me. She has whacked a few small hermit crabs and snails and carried them back to her tunnel, but then she always (with maybe one exception) ends up kicking them out, alive and well, several minutes later. I guess I need to try very small non-hermit crabs or a stomatella snails... I also feed her a mysis or two (soaked in vitachem) every 10-14 days. I try not to feed frozen food very often so that it will encourage her to hunt.
She's always funny to watch... She was walking past a pseudocorynactis (a ball-tip corallimorph, maybe 3/4" in diameter) one day and it stuck to her briefly before she jerked away. She tentatively touched it again, at which point it briefly stuck to her once more. She then proceeded to whack the crap out of it and dart back to her hole! She also likes to take out her frustration on rocks that are too big for her to swim (not roll) back to her doorway, whacking them repeatedly, presumably in an attempt to break them down into smaller pieces. One of the funniest things was when she picked up a piece of liverock almost as big as herself, swam the long way around the liverock and then dropped it above her doorway -- something like a dive-bomber... only she missed and a palythoa ended up with a mouth full of rock! On another occasion, she was just sitting at the entrance to her tunnel wrapped around that same paly... kinda like a she was hugging a big fuzzy teddy bear. Wish I'd gotten a photo of that!
Her tank-mates currently include: 3 nerite snails, 3 nassarius snails, 3 blue-leg hermits, zoas/palys, a cladiella (blanching) coral, several gorgonians, a yellow ball sponge, a red sponge with a commensal brittlestar living under it, a colony of tubastrea (sun corals), and of course, the pseudocorynactis. She doesn't bother the brittlestar but she has completely rearranged all of the palys and zoas that were on rocks small enough for her to move.
Her main tunnel (already existing in the liverock... not excavated by her) is about 1-1.5 inches in diameter and originally had three openings: one at ground level near the center of the tank, another near the middle of tunnel about an inch off the ground, and the third at the opposite end of the tunnel about two inches off the ground near the side of the tank where I sit. Apparently that was one opening too many as she has completely blocked off the middle one. The openings at each end of the tunnel are now surrounded by pieces of rubble which she uses to close the doorways at night.
She's definitely not shy, often not bothering to retreat even when I wipe the glass 2 inches in front of her, and she spends a lot of time watching me while I'm at the computer and will track my dogs and cats as the pass her tank. I've only read two other accounts from people who owned the species, but theirs seemed to be just as active and personable as mine. I wouldn't recommend them as a "first" mantis for someone, but if you are looking for an active and (perhaps more importantly) interactive mantis that doesn't get as large as the O. scyllarus (peacock) and if you can maintain the chemical stability and physical containment the species requires, then you might consider an Odontodactylus latirostris.
I'll continue to add to this journal as noteworthy experiences arise...
Greg
