Ms. Peacock

I

Islandoftiki

New member
It was done by Ms. Peacock in the aquarium with a hammer...
Well, there's a Clue. If you know what I mean.

So, this weekend, I added another stomatopod to the family.

Long story short, one of the local reefers could no longer keep his female mantis shrimp, and I being the local mantis specialist, worked out a deal where I traded some coral for the entire tank, stand and mantis.

Today, with the help of my friend Jack (a fellow mantis owner), we moved the tank to my place.

The move went quite smoothly and now we are a two mantis household...

Here she is after re-building her burrow (PVC)...
3191D28D-orig_zpsce8fe61e.jpg


She shares her den with a blue damsel fish which seems to work.

She isn't super keen about the dogs as she's been doing some serious threat posturing when they come into the room. I'm sure that's only temporary.
 
I've been working on getting some details of the tank dialed in over the past two days. Cover, viewing light and filtration are all getting added/upgraded.

Tonight I had a pretty amusing encounter with her as I tried to offer her various foods that my G. Ternatensis loves. She apparently has different ideas of what tastes good...

 
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What size PVC for that peacock? Or at least a full grown 6 inch or so one? I think the pvc I have on hand may be too small.
 
I'm not sure, I haven't taken it out or measured it since I got her the other day. It looks like it's about 2 1/2" pipe to me, but she's pretty small still, maybe 4 inches. It seems to work pretty well for her. I'm planning to build a different den for her that's a little more inconspicuous. I'll probably stick with the same size pipe she has now.
 
Fitz19d said:
What size PVC for that peacock? Or at least a full grown 6 inch or so one? I think the pvc I have on hand may be too small.
Click to expand...

I actually logged in to ask that exact question! My new peacock is around 6" and I'm working on his new setup now. Had been thinking that 1 1/2" would be big enough - off to Home Depot again.....

I think your rock does a good job of disguising the PVC. Pretty girl! I'll be interested to see how long the damsel lasts (I tried one with my much-smaller graphurus but it didn't last more than a month or two).
 
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Both this one and my G. Ternatensis live with fish and don't show any interest in them. They both get fed often enough that I doubt they'd expend the energy to try to kill a fish.

This might be slightly large for her, but she fills in the ends with rubble to her liking. Just make sure to give your mantis lots of bits of rubble to build with. Mine can lift rocks half her size, but give them lots of different sizes and shapes to work with. They're pretty good builders.
 
Hilary said:
I actually logged in to ask that exact question! My new peacock is around 6" and I'm working on his new setup now. Had been thinking that 1 1/2" would be big enough - off to Home Depot again.....

I think your rock does a good job of disguising the PVC. Pretty girl! I'll be interested to see how long the damsel lasts (I tried one with my much-smaller graphurus but it didn't last more than a month or two).
Click to expand...

If yours is 6" then it's about full grown. The size of the PVC should be double the width of the mantis and at least 4x the length. So 1.5"x2 = 3". My pipe including the turned up ends is about 30" long. The Peacock will do the rest as far as arranging rocks and filling the pipe with it's own desired amounts of rubble.

If you read through all of Dr. Roy's threads you will come across all of this information. I should have bookmarked it.
 
Hilary said:
I actually logged in to ask that exact question! My new peacock is around 6" and I'm working on his new setup now. Had been thinking that 1 1/2" would be big enough - off to Home Depot again.....

I think your rock does a good job of disguising the PVC. Pretty girl! I'll be interested to see how long the damsel lasts (I tried one with my much-smaller graphurus but it didn't last more than a month or two).
Click to expand...

If yours is 6" then it's about full grown. The size of the PVC should be double the width of the mantis. So 1.5"x2 = 3". The Peacock will do the rest as far as arranging rocks and filling the pipe with it's own desired amounts of rubble.
 
A couple of updates to the tank today...

A second AC50 that I'm going to turn into a chaeto fuge using an Ikea LED clamp light.

2630C7D8-orig_zpsf55fafdb.jpg


New heater:

100w Cobalt Neo-Therm

4A3AC963-orig_zps12a6675c.jpg


Tomorrow I will work on building a special media basket for the chaeto and hook up the light.
 
Both entrances closed up for the past three days...

3D455B45-orig_zpsaf984a63.jpg


I suspect someone is molting. I'm curious if moving the tank triggered the molt. I think nearly every single one of my shrimp/crabs/stomatopods have molted right after moving them. Anybody else experience this?
 
So, here's a full tank shot. Everything is in place and the wiring is all bundled up and tidy now.

D02505BB-orig_zps64e5086a.jpg


Once she's done molting, I'll start adding some of the extra rock from the 25 gallon tank to fill it in a little. I'm also going to give her some of the shells that we picked up in Hawaii. I need to clean them really thoroughly first.
 
Ok, so it's been one week with this tank, and I've been working to get the mechanicals and filtration sorted out and up to speed.

The nitrates in the tank are high (30-40ppm), That's one reason why the chaeto refugium was added. I've been dosing Macrobacter 7 since I got the tank (I'm not sure how much it helps).

Anyhow, I'm reluctant to start doing lots of water changes since the mantis is obviously going through a molt.

I'm also reluctant to start adding extra live rock from the 25 gallon mantis tank until she comes out of the molt.

Any thoughts? Hold off on water changes during the molt or start doing them now? The nitrates are obviously going to be coming down now that the fuge is online, but I'm not sure how fast it will bring 40ppm down. When I added the chaeto to my 25 gallon tank, the nitrates dropped from 5ppm to Zero in two days.

This is obviously not an ideal situation, and my initial thoughts are to leave things stable until the molt is over, then do a couple of larger water changes.
 
Ok, I PM'ed Dr. Caldwell and I'm going with his recommendation to do water changes to bring the nitrates down even though she's molting. I'll be exactly matching temperature and salinity of the new saltwater (as I always do, and he recommended).
 
Here we go...

First water change, 5 gallons. Temperature matched to .1 degree. Salinity matched exactly 1.025.

I'll wait an hour or two and do another 5 gallons.

I'm planning to do one more 5 gallon water change tonight, and I'll continue with more tomorrow until I get it down to 5ppm or less.

This seems like the safest way to lower the nitrates without a big shock during the molt.
 
Third 5 gallon water change in three hours. In addition to that, I added a double dose of Seachem Prime which will help to lock up additional nitrates for about 48 hours, and by then, I'll have done enough water changes to be well below 5ppm. The chaeto should take care of the rest.

She's been watching me do the water changes from the safety of her burrow.

CCFBD1D9-orig_zps879eb67d.jpg


Nitrates are much better (they were around 40!)

A16489A8-orig_zps85ca2457.jpg


One or two more water changes tomorrow and we'll be good to go.
 
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