mantis newb, a few questions

[dues0009]

hello all, after a few weeks of research i finally obtained a g smithii which i placed in a 10 gallon tank. The tank has 30 lbs of live sand, about 7 lbs of live rock, and maybe 10 lbs of lace rock. My lighting right now is just an NO actinic bulb, but i will most likely change that to a 50/50 instead (any tips on what the best NO light for this species would be?). My next question is about feeding, the mantis tank is in my bedroom next to my 75 gallon planted discus tank which is heavily infested with snails at the moment. Could I feed my mantis off the snails from my FW tank for the time being? There aren't really any good lfs in my area so I don't know about what other live foods would be readily available. Lastly, I have a glass heater in the tank right now. I get the feeling that this probably isn't the best idea, but i can't afford to buy a new heater right now. I was thinking about buying some pvc and drilling a bunch of holes in it to create a makeshift heater guard. Is that a good idea? Any input at all would be very much appreciated. Thanks.

Jon

 

[Thurge]

NO light for a mantis tank is pretty much what ever looks best to you. You , for now, don't sound like you are going to add any corals, Zoa's etc so the spectral output of the light is not that important. Feeding Freshwater stuff to a marine animal isn't really a good idea as they have evolved differently and there are differenes in the "comopsition" ie. Fats, Lipids, Amino Acids, etc, and marine animals digestive systems aren't designed to handle them. A crayfish once in a blue moon is one thing but for long term daily feeding its not a good idea. Frozen Krill, Silversides, Scallops makes a good regular food, suplimented with some snails when you are going to be around a LFS should be fine. You can keep the snails in a Kritter Keeper in the tank so the mantis can't annihalate them all at once and dole them out over time. Your idea for a heater guard is right on. I haven't ever made one but I know others have. Using the search function for Heater Guard should give you he plans for building one. You may have to wait until late at night to get the RC search engin to work, but you can also use google's advanced search functions to just search RC for the thread you need for the plans. On the other hand I have a regular Glass Heater in with one of my mantis's with no problems so far, but its a small risk.