Ms. Peacock

[Islandoftiki]

He's there was no internal damage. Those hits can rupture organs.

Fortunately, the hits were way up at the top of his back where there aren't a lot of mission critical parts. From the sound of the hits, they were even less hard than when she's hit me. I'm sure it wasn't too hard. She's awfully tolerant of that fish. Hopefully he has the sense not to hassle her like that again. Generally when I feed, I try to keep the two separated as much as possible, but they do what they do.

 

[Fartin'Gary]

I was just remembering the brutal mark left on one of my green chromis after it got to close to the bottom of the tank. It was just a matter of time before it lost the strength to swim and was finished off. I had never seen a smasher take down a fish before but it was fast and powerful. She hit it like 3 good times and that was it. Dead. It was probably dead after the first blow but after the next two it stopped moving. She left the yellow tail damsel alone but always eyed the chromis. Maybe the color or reflectiveness of the scales was a very attractive offer to her.

 

[Islandoftiki]

Good news. Barney is no worse for wear today. He still has two very faint marks that I've highlighted with arrows, but they've faded at this point and I suspect he's going to be just fine. It's really hard to see in the picture. He's a pain to photograph since he constantly darts around. This is the best I could do.

Hopefully he's learned not to steal food from a mantis shrimp.

 

[Islandoftiki]

Just a quick video of Betty swimming at the camera. I coaxed her into coming up to the glass by showing her an object she had never seen before. As always, she has to check it out. Give then time of day I took the video, she was probably expecting it to be food.



Watch closely and you can see the "rowing" action of the pleopods.

 

[Islandoftiki]

Testing out my new Samsung Galaxy S5 phone camera. Way better than my old Galaxy S3, IMO. These are unedited and untouched.

 

[Islandoftiki]

After the ATO failure while I was in Hawaii, my poor bali green slimer acropora and my pink birdsnest corals have been slowly declining and I finally decided to pull the plug on them and replace them. They both were STN'ing and bleaching. Fortunately, they were the only two corals in the tank that were affected, and neither one was expensive.

So, this weekend, our really awesome LFS is doing a buy one get one free SPS coral sale. So, I did.

I got these two to replace the ones I lost:

And for some reason I fell in love with this nuclear green torch coral, so I had to have it.

With the two sick corals removed and the new ones in place and starting to open up, here's a new FTS:

I'll get some better pictures mid-day tomorrow when the lights are at 100%.

 

[RNich34]

Your mantis got lost in all that coral. :lol:

 

[Islandoftiki]

Your mantis got lost in all that coral. :lol:

It's like a technicolor where's Waldo picture.

 

[Islandoftiki]

Getting better with the new cell phone camera...

 

[Fartin'Gary]

Is that Barney or a new fish in there? My peacock destroyed green chromis when I put them in there.

 

[Islandoftiki]

Is that Barney or a new fish in there? My peacock destroyed green chromis when I put them in there.

That's Barney. The strike marks went away two or three days after she hit him. It was pretty superficial.

I hear more and more stories about mantis going after chromis. I've never heard of a smasher going after a damsel to eat it. I've only witnessed my damsel getting put in his place for being a jerk to her. Chromis must be tasty.

 

[Islandoftiki]

Hey, get that torch coral out of your mouth, you don't know where it's been!

 

[Islandoftiki]

And the newest addition to Betty's tank. A photosynthetic gorgonian.

 

[Islandoftiki]

Interesting article about crayfish that made me think about stomatopods and the importance of providing them with a PVC burrow and a comfortable environment.

BBC News: Crayfish may experience form of anxiety

Perhaps our stomatopod friends also experience feeling similar to anxiety and fear? From my own observations of my own mantis shrimp, I don't doubt it for a second.

 

[Islandoftiki]

I always knew Batgirl was a stomatopod...

 

[Islandoftiki]

Here's something I haven't really posted before. A top-down shot of this tank. I was doing a water change and had the water drained down a couple inches and realized it was a good opportunity for a picture...

Betty hid out in her den during the water change as usual.

 

[Islandoftiki]

Who likes D&D? Mantis shrimp! What happens when you introduce a mantis shrimp to gaming dice? A lot of critical hits on that D20!



Music free version if you want to hear her hitting the dice clearly:

 

[Islandoftiki]

For those that are curious about the specifics of this little experiment, here's a little more info. That video was taken over the course of about two and a half hours with a lot of her time spent deep in her burrow hammering on the dice and not creating very exciting video. She tried four different shapes. The D6 was the least interesting to her. She continued to mess around with the D20 for another couple hours. After that point, she had concluded that she couldn't break them open to find out what is inside and quickly lost interest. Obviously they were a poor source of food. She piled all of the dice in a neat pile just outside of the right entrance to her burrow and hasn't touched them since.

 

[Islandoftiki]

Hey folks!

It's getting real. Our move to Hawaii, that is. Our house is going on the market at the end of August, and we have our plane tickets purchased! November 6th! We're still organizing the shipping of our belongings to the island, but things are moving along swiftly. We're garage saling or donating anything we don't absolutely need to take with us.

And... While we're done firing our kiln and making any new sea creature mugs or other oceanic creations, we still have some inventory remaining that we hope we don't have to pack up and bring with us. That means a BIG SALE at my fiance's Etsy store! Mantis shrimp mugs, cephalopod mugs, and much much more are all drastically on sale! Check it out!

This will be your last chance for quite a while as it's going to be a while before we can get everything set up and producing on the island!

 

[Islandoftiki]

So, as some of you already know, I'm moving to Hawaii in November. That means that I have to re-home my beloved female O. scyllarus mantis, Betty. That's the terribly sad news (for me and my fiance at least).

The good news is that I've found her what I believe in my heart to be the perfect new home. A gentleman that lives about an hour South of here who has a good amount of saltwater experience is going to take her. In fact, he's going to purchase the entire tank, so she should make the transition to her new home and still feel safe and secure in her existing tank and she will get to stay with her damsel fish buddy, Barney. He was planning to set up a mantis tank as soon as he could get an O. scyllarus from the LFS, but they kept getting G. chiragras. So, to say that he's excited about taking stewardship of Betty is an understatement.

My fiance has been particularly hard hit by the idea that we're losing a small part of our flock. Unfortunately, it's not legal to bring an O. scyllarus to Hawaii as it's not an endemic species and they're extremely sensitive about such things.

We have a couple more weeks with her before we organize the tank move, so we will be making the most of our time with her.

I'm getting enough money from the tank sale to purchase a new tank (IM Fusion 30 long) and necessary parts to set up something even better in Hawaii. When we get settled down there and ready to get the new tank up and running, I'm hoping to find myself an O. brevirostris for the 30 gallon tank and a P. ciliata for my 25 gallon tank.

So, I'm sad to say, that during our transition, I won't have a mantis shrimp, and that will be a bit of a void in our lives, but I'm looking forward to exciting new things to come in the future!

Stay tuned!