Ms. Peacock

Ok, so I got out the big camera today (most of my pictures are taken with my cell phone) and played around a lot with the shutter speed, aperture and white balance. I really have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to manual camera settings, so suffice it to say that there were a lot of unusable pictures. This is the one that most closely resembles what the tank look like to my eyes at the current 78% lighting, which is continuing to go up at about 5% per week.

Anyhow, there isn't hardly a single square inch left to add corals to. Now it's just a matter of letting it grow out and enjoy the tank.

Tankupdate_zps6fe8018b.jpg
 
Betty went on a rearranging spree last night and some frags had to be put back. Some people have wondered how I work in the tank. This is one of the ways. It's quite clumsy and difficult though. It's easier just to use your hands since she really isn't bothered by the sight of hands in the tank. The claw tool is another story. She does not like the claw.

 
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Ok, so what's it like, you ask, to be hit by a 5" long O. Scyllarus on directly on the index fingernail? Well, when we're talking about Betty, it's not bad. I felt it. I'd snapped myself harder with a rubber band. Interestingly enough though, I can still feel it 30 minutes later. No visible damage. Luckily she didn't stab. DO NOT try this at home.



It was an unusual amount of noise for the small amount of impact.
 
She was extremely curious about my hand and if I had left it in there with her, she probably would have tested it to the breaking point.
 
I got whacked on my nail once too. I got hit pretty hard. there was a mark left over and the sensation lasted for some time. They don't always let go with all of their force. When I got hit I took it as a GTFO love tap.
 
It's what I want my compartments too look like in the end (filled with corals) :).

The only thing I seriously overlooked was my ability to fill so many tanks with coral considering some of the things that I particularly like are quite small and...excessively expensive xD....

I kept seeing all the compartments and tanks filled with coral but I kept forgetting coral isn't free xD...
 
Kharn said:
It's what I want my compartments too look like in the end (filled with corals) :).

The only thing I seriously overlooked was my ability to fill so many tanks with coral considering some of the things that I particularly like are quite small and...excessively expensive xD....

I kept seeing all the compartments and tanks filled with coral but I kept forgetting coral isn't free xD...
Click to expand...

You must not have much of a local community of reefers in your area. I've purchased quite a few corals, but even more, I've traded with others in my area. Some people are exceedingly generous. You go over to buy a $10.00 frag from them and they end up giving you five or six things for your ten bucks. Plus we also do straight trades with no money involved. If you are getting decent growth rates, it isn't long before you have lots of stuff to trade, even SPS.

The really good stuff almost always costs money, but you can also sell it when it grows.

I'm fortunate that we have such a large and active saltwater club here in Portland, OR.
 
Saturday morning, I came downstairs for some coffee and my heart skipped a beat as I looked at Betty's tank. The water was horribly cloudy and milky looking. At first I thought something had gone wrong with the ALK doser and I was getting a lot of precipitated calcium carbonate or something. Then I saw that the majority of the sand bed was piled up on the right side of the tank. Then Betty came out of her den with a huge maxilliped load of sand and tossed it on top of the large pile of substrate. Whew, at least I knew what was causing the water to be cloudy, and it was nothing serious.

It turns out that she decided she wanted a second burrow tunnel just in front of her existing PVC burrow. She spent the majority of the morning excavating a tunnel under the rockwork. She then started taking small bits of rock rubble into the new addition to shore it up. The entire project took her the better part of the day, and I managed to catch a little bit of shaky cell phone video of the excavation process that was going in the morning.

The new burrow extends all the way down to the glass bottom of the tank... and this my friends is why we put acrylic on the bottom of a glass mantis shrimp tank. There was a lot of hammering going on throughout the day, I'm sure some of it was directed at the bottom of the tank. I never would have expected she would build an addition on to her existing burrow, but she did. So, she has a bonus room now.

 
It's funny, the mantis feeding gets so much internet playtime, and it's very cool, but my favorite part of mantis ownership is what you showed in that vid - the way they build things. The way they seem to have a plan in place and are able to construct quite impressive structures.

Thor was finally confident enough today to let me watch him behave more or less normally, and he was hilarious with the way he sampled the sand to check its consistency from different parts of the tank. He tried to move every empty snail shell and piece of rubble he could find, just to get a feel for his building materials it seemed like. I really enjoy watching him wake up in the morning and deconstruct his burrow's door too.
 
Just thought I'd share Betty's affinity for re-decorating the tank. Here are all of the frags that have been moved in the last 24 hours...

63960E02-orig_zps95d2000f.jpg


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In most cases, these frags have been moved at least half-way across the tank, or all the way from one side to the other. :)

I'm going to have to glue those SPS down if they're going to survive...
 
This morning's decorations left a little to be desired. SPS frags laying sideways, partially buried birdsnest, undata frag removed and covered with a rock.

7FA784EF-orig_zps4222b09a.jpg
 
Yeah, Thor killed the sea fan frag I was given by KP Aquatics. He dragged it all around, threw sand on it, left it in a hole in the live rock, good stuff. Fortunately, it didn't cost me anything.
 
If it's not bolted down, it's free game. I once planted a bunch of red micro algae all around the tank to get some grass like effect going on. Took about half hour of time. Ten minutes later it was all gone and stuffed into the burrow. They love their trinkets.
 
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