dbrooks1440
New member
Around two months ago I inherited a mantis from a reefer here in San Diego. It was a plain, brown, rather ugly little beast - but he was sort of cool none-the-less.
He feasted mightily on hermit crabs for the first couple of days and would appear from time-to-time during the day. He resided in a 20g tank that I have set up in my office, along with three of the meanest damsels you have ever seen.
Then, I went on a two week business trip...
I figured that he could make the stretch not having much to eat...
I returned from my trip to find the damsels alive and well (a co-worker feeds them pellets), but the mantis was MIA.
In the meanwhile...I have a SQWD setup on a closed loop that had an air leak which introduced tons of micro bubbles into the tank. Being as the unit was modular, I was able to remove it in its entirety and tighten up all of the connections in the hope finding the leak. As a bench test, I submerged the entire unit into a highly chlorinated test pool that we have at our facility to insure that it was air tight...looked good.
I re-installed the closed loop in the tank (after draining it of the chlorinated water), plugged her in and and left for the night without seeing the mantis.
The next morning, I made another search for the mantis and finally found him in the intake of the closed loop! Not knowing how long he had been there, I rattled the pipe and bit, and got a rather anemic response...was he dying? Molting? Who knew. A couple days later I got my answer - he was DEAD! I pulled the closed loop out of the tank once again and extracted his body - who would have though that a stench that large could have come from such a small body? I felt bad for the little guy as I am certain that he took a swim in the chlorine pool on his was down the tubes...I just hadn't noticed him in there.
One month passed...
Today, I called a LFS to see if they had any mantis' on the shelf - they did. I drove down and picked up a beauty for $10. I think it's a peacock or a purple spot...but then I have no clue what to look for, really...all I know is that he is very colorful. He was recently pulled from a well respected reefers tank that found him while fragging some zoos (he was splitting the rock), and took him to the LFS for safe keeping.
I am dedicated to taking better care of this little guy than the last poor soul, and need a little advise. I currently have about 20 small hermits in the tank, that I hope he feasts on tonight. I also want to do the scallop-soaked-in-garlic-sauce trick. The question I have is: what is this secret garlic sauce? Is there a particular brand that I should look for? I have frozen cyclope-eze that I feed to my large reef at home - should I just mix some of those shavings in with the sauce?
Lastly, what temps can these handle? The live rock that he came out of was from Fiji - I assume that he will be able to tolerate reasonably warm water temps? My tank at work is near a shuttered window, but the temp hits the low-to-mid eighties on a daily basis. Can they handle this?
Thanks
Dave in San Diego
He feasted mightily on hermit crabs for the first couple of days and would appear from time-to-time during the day. He resided in a 20g tank that I have set up in my office, along with three of the meanest damsels you have ever seen.
Then, I went on a two week business trip...
I figured that he could make the stretch not having much to eat...
I returned from my trip to find the damsels alive and well (a co-worker feeds them pellets), but the mantis was MIA.
In the meanwhile...I have a SQWD setup on a closed loop that had an air leak which introduced tons of micro bubbles into the tank. Being as the unit was modular, I was able to remove it in its entirety and tighten up all of the connections in the hope finding the leak. As a bench test, I submerged the entire unit into a highly chlorinated test pool that we have at our facility to insure that it was air tight...looked good.
I re-installed the closed loop in the tank (after draining it of the chlorinated water), plugged her in and and left for the night without seeing the mantis.
The next morning, I made another search for the mantis and finally found him in the intake of the closed loop! Not knowing how long he had been there, I rattled the pipe and bit, and got a rather anemic response...was he dying? Molting? Who knew. A couple days later I got my answer - he was DEAD! I pulled the closed loop out of the tank once again and extracted his body - who would have though that a stench that large could have come from such a small body? I felt bad for the little guy as I am certain that he took a swim in the chlorine pool on his was down the tubes...I just hadn't noticed him in there.
One month passed...
Today, I called a LFS to see if they had any mantis' on the shelf - they did. I drove down and picked up a beauty for $10. I think it's a peacock or a purple spot...but then I have no clue what to look for, really...all I know is that he is very colorful. He was recently pulled from a well respected reefers tank that found him while fragging some zoos (he was splitting the rock), and took him to the LFS for safe keeping.
I am dedicated to taking better care of this little guy than the last poor soul, and need a little advise. I currently have about 20 small hermits in the tank, that I hope he feasts on tonight. I also want to do the scallop-soaked-in-garlic-sauce trick. The question I have is: what is this secret garlic sauce? Is there a particular brand that I should look for? I have frozen cyclope-eze that I feed to my large reef at home - should I just mix some of those shavings in with the sauce?
Lastly, what temps can these handle? The live rock that he came out of was from Fiji - I assume that he will be able to tolerate reasonably warm water temps? My tank at work is near a shuttered window, but the temp hits the low-to-mid eighties on a daily basis. Can they handle this?
Thanks
Dave in San Diego
