My Ultimate Multi Mantis System(s)

[Kharn]

I plan on moving all the stands into the room this week, I shall finish anything that the stands need done in the room the stands will live in, things to be done are Hooks to Hang the lights (each hook goes into the base of each tanks ply sheet to hang from) then there is just the Hood Ornaments left to help conceal the lights & the top of the tanks.

So hopefully by this weekend I can get water in each stand and have it cycling (depending on the arrival of the Poly Risers to connect each tank in each stand). After using this FX5 on my current "Temp Setup" I am starting to think that STAND B may be ok with the standard output fitting and not requiring a Difuser however my Temp Tank is much deeper then the tanks for the stands only the bottom tank on STAND B matches basically exactly, the 3 foot tank I have now as the Temp Setup, the reason all the bottom tanks are +1/2 height (example most tanks are 350mm H the bottom tank on STAND A & B are both 450mm high) is to account for water loss/drainage during power outs cause some water is going to want to go down from the top 2 tanks in each stand, gravity.

 

[Kharn]

I am undecided rite now whether I am going to "encase" the rear and sides in a thin ply sheeting to help conceal it all, one thing I did over look due to so much going on is the fact that the piping connecting each tank within its stand, sticks out a few inches from the steel frame, so if I were to "encase" the stands in thin ply sheet, I'd need to cut long rectangles out in its sides to allow for the piping to slot into it and poke out of it once in place.

Either way I need to basically have EVERYTHING up and running before that point so I MAY do it during the tanks cycles.

 

[Kharn]

Last night during my sleep my obsession for stomatopods showed...

I had a strange dream/nightmare albeit NOTHING over the top all of it completely plausible which is what made it feel so real / scary.

I can't recall my dreams completely anymore but I do remember this...for some reason during the transferring of my animals I decided to use a clear plastic rectangular container to use to scoop up my smaller smashers (I do NOT need to do this nor would it be capable of placing such an item into the sump to use to move them). Anyway I started to scoop up each mantis and I got a few done (I do not know where I was putting them once scooping them) when it came time to scoop up Minnie, I was too rough and cut her head off when I 'accidentally' slammed the plastic container against the side of the tank in an attempt to trap her.

I woke up coated in sweat and scared remember how I lost Minnie yesterday, but when I woke and looked she was there in her Live Rock staring out at me as if to say "Good Morning" (the temp setup is at the end of my bed).

So I wiped away what sweat was left on my head knowing full well, it was just a dream .

weird

 

[Bluemon]

HAHAHAHAHA THATS GREAT.

lol A+ for the love of stomatopods.

will you have a huge refugium?
maybe one huge display refugium with macroalgae, live rocks, and best of all... LIVE FOOD FOR THE MANTIS!

 

[Kharn]

HAHAHAHAHA THATS GREAT.

lol A+ for the love of stomatopods.

will you have a huge refugium?
maybe one huge display refugium with macroalgae, live rocks, and best of all... LIVE FOOD FOR THE MANTIS!

Not sure maybe down the track... there is room to slot a nice long and deep (but not very wide) tank behind all the stands that I could possibly link to all the stands

Rite now its all about finishing this off to get the stomatopods I do have into there homes, its been way to long and I only further reduced there compartments (well for my large spearers) the smashers are in the same place but that is a sad sight and they deserve there space and freedom.

 

[Kharn]

Last night I did a lot of excavating and maneuvering within the room the stands will reside in. It took me a while but I gutted the whole wall that the stands will inevitably occupy so this evening I am getting one of my co-workers over to help me muscle the stands into place as they do weigh a lot and mostly because of there size it will take some effort to get them through a "normal" door way.

However I did manage to drain all the water from the old 4footer that house my large spearers, into there Temp tank, then I went about the long task of digging up all the sand in the tank to make it lite enough to move (myself) which I did in the end =D I left about 2inchs of substrate and an inch or 2 of water in it, then I grabbed it (like I do my missus ) and just hoofed the whole thing out myself, now the room looks REALLY bare with one of its largest walls being totally bare. (Thought about hanging my boxers on the wall to help it cover up the bareness lol).

Only things left to do on the stands are to screw in some hooks to hang the lights off and attach the Hoods to the front of each stand, slightly above each tank so the bottom of the hoods meet around the internal water line of the tank its resting above.

Hopefully by this weekend I can have all the stands in the room and completed to go with there tanks in place and plumbed, all that would be left is to fill and cycle =D

I am so happy I got both my large spearers out of there old tanks SAFELY (specifically there burrows) because I KNEW one wrong move would mean a cave in and a likely hood of a death but, now that its done and there is NO sand in there temp setup, when I have to remove them from there Temp setup, it'll be a piece of cake =)

 

[Kharn]

HAHAHAHAHA THATS GREAT.

lol A+ for the love of stomatopods.

will you have a huge refugium?
maybe one huge display refugium with macroalgae, live rocks, and best of all... LIVE FOOD FOR THE MANTIS!

One thing I can do for a sort of live food storage would be to turn the "Temp Tank" into the Live Food tank, capable of housing all sorts of critters for the Multi Mantis System.

I got a great deal with a mate of mine that will sell me 50 live 1-2inch ghost shrimp for......$6 :bounce1: but 10 of those didn't last long with Zuzu when I dumped them all in his tank on my first buy (thinking he couldn't eat them all...)

I will highly Likely do this for the Temp Tank, since it is NOT in "the way" where it is and well its an up and running system all I might have to do is add a sand bed to help feed...the feeder critters lol.

 

[TundraGuy]

Yo man I am so sad to see you did the mantis move without a camera. Lol did you use the lasso or did you find a better trick? Good to see you still have use of your fingers.
I like the idea of having a “live food” holding area. It makes a lot of since to me. I know your really into controlling the feeding times for your mantis. It will be kind of like having a fuge without all the macro. Are you still using the leds from Ikea, and are you using the color changing ones? If you are will you try and see if the color of the light will have any effect over the color of the mantis?

 

[Kharn]

Yo man I am so sad to see you did the mantis move without a camera. Lol did you use the lasso or did you find a better trick? Good to see you still have use of your fingers.
I like the idea of having a "œlive food" holding area. It makes a lot of since to me. I know your really into controlling the feeding times for your mantis. It will be kind of like having a fuge without all the macro. Are you still using the leds from Ikea, and are you using the color changing ones? If you are will you try and see if the color of the light will have any effect over the color of the mantis?

I knew you particularly would be sad by the fact that I didn't film the capture process but things did get awkward, firstly I DID NOT use the lasso method (not that I have anything against it at all, since it was recommended by the stomatopod man! I just felt to paranoid about it and could see myself ripping the animals in half...) What I did (which worked like a charm) was to study the each spearers burrows knowing where which tunnel went where.

Then I proceeded to stick long steel skewers (blunted) down into the burrow sort of blocking it off behind the mantis, then I dragged the skewers towards the mantis, destroying its burrow in the process, this made them come flying out and for easy capture.

It also makes sense to use the Temp Tank for something since its all brand new and be a waste to not use it, that and its already setup ready for Live Food basically.

I am not using the LED's from IKEA I went and found some actual aquarium LED's there awesome, extremely light and very bright, each light coems with 3 LED strips in its fixture, 2 white 1 blue and the fixture has 2 switches (one for the blue and one for the whites) so I can alter when whats on.

As far as using different colors, all I am going to do (to get the pics) is use a powerful torch with some colored cellophane to use the different colors when I need to see them that and a good UV torch too.

 

[TundraGuy]

“I am not using the LED's from IKEA I went and found some actual aquarium LED's there awesome, extremely light and very bright, each light coems with 3 LED strips in its fixture, 2 white 1 blue and the fixture has 2 switches (one for the blue and one for the whites) so I can alter when whats on.

As far as using different colors, all I am going to do (to get the pics) is use a powerful torch with some colored cellophane to use the different colors when I need to see them that and a good UV torch too.”

Sounds good but I was referring to using different color lighting on the mantis for a couple months to see if the colored light would stimulate the mantis coloration during and post molt.

The skewer trick so simple and vary affective. Bravo.

 

[Kharn]

Ok so I have just had confirmation from Dr. Caldwell that if the spearers are kept too long without sand in which to build burrows they will loose the ability to build burrows in the future and loose the ability to produce the mucus to make burrows....

So time is against me and with no "die hard" figures to go off as in how long can a spearer be kept from sand before it looses its ability to construct burrows with mucus....

I have a problem.....possibly a VERY VERY BIG PROBLEM! potentially detrimental to all of STAND C, if the spearers can't burrow then that whole STAND is virtually useless....

 

[Kharn]

Hopefully I can get water in the tanks by mid next week....by then I hope to have everything practically done I only hope that its not too late for the large spearers else I do not know what I will do....

 

[GeorgeMonnatJr]

I don't know much about reef tanks, yet, and even less about mantis shrimp. This may be a stupid question. Can you take a QT tank (yours or borrowed) and dump a bunch of sand in it to allow them temporary places to burrow?

 

[Kharn]

I don't know much about reef tanks, yet, and even less about mantis shrimp. This may be a stupid question. Can you take a QT tank (yours or borrowed) and dump a bunch of sand in it to allow them temporary places to burrow?

You could. However being temporary, getting it out of its burrow (again) will make for another stressful transaction (hence why I didn't give them sand again) also I had heard that they would be fine without sand, it was only after that I realized I remember how if they DO NOT get sand for X amount of time, they loose the ability to produce mucus and hence make burrows in sand....which is 1/2 of the whole aspect for keeping these magnificent animals... lol

 

[Kharn]

Should have STAND C up and running/cycling by tomorrow in order to get the large spearers back into a DSB where they belong before its too late for them to create burrows ever again....

 

[TundraGuy]

Hehehehehehe :lol2:

 

[Kharn]

:dance: STAND C has been a success! :dance:

Although everything is running and operational, the water in there at the moment is just freshwater from the tap to give it all a good "test" and we have run into 2 problems although neither of them are detrimental to the performance of the stand overall.

Firstly (and I need help here from you guys :fun4 when the power goes out, the natural siphon reaction from the canister starts to act in REVERSE aka it sucks water from its output (top tank) and pushes it back out in its intake (bottom tank) which causes the bottom tank to fill, the only way I can prevent this from happening is to do the same thing you do with a typical sump return pumps plumbing where by I drill/cut a hole in the Output tube (top tank) so that when there is a power out and the water starts to get sucked into the OUTPUT, the water drains till it reaches that hole in the tube where by air is sucked and it breaks the siphon effect.

Would this work the same way as a sump return pumps plumbing setup or would I run into a problem ?

Secondly (this may be solved with the top problems solution), the water coming down the Poly Pipe and going into the tank at the bottom is quite fast mostly in part because there is not as much water in the bottom tank (to account for back flow when the power goes out) if I can get the water line up to where it should be in the bottom tank this problem goes away.

So I am thinking I can kill 2 birds with 1 stone here by just drilling a hole through the OUTPUT tube JUST under the water line of the Top tank where the OUTPUT tube goes, that way reducing back flow going into the FX5 and back down into the bottom tank since when the water drains to that drill hole, in theory it should break the siphon effect since it is now sucking air.

STAND C overall


STAND C top tank


STAND C bottom tank


We ran out of time today took us 5hrs to get it all going and done, also running into this slight problem (I am virtually 99.9% positive that i just need to drill a hole or 2 high up in the output tube to prevent this happening is all, in theory the canister IS just a "over the top" return pump xD.

MUCH more to come :rollface:

P.S. Ironically ALLLLL day both Morgoth & Leviathan were out of there burrows staring at me, I got a feeling they know whats up and are getting excited xD

 

[Kharn]

I hope this makes clearer what I am talking about, there is a current output setup and what I am describing above output setup, like I said above its exactly the same as a normal return pump design basically.....

Also for the curious few, the FX5 has automatic purging, once a day (or at power out) it will pump all the air out of itself.

I really hope this fixes the problem as it would not only be easy but it would solve the problem with the bottom tank having too little water hence the bulkhead is quite above the water line and it dumps the water coming from the above tank creating splashing etc and a lot of water disturbance.



As I said above I am 99.9% positive this should solve my issues on both ends (drilling a hole in the output means I don't have to compensate for as much air gap in the bottom tank that there currently is in order to take on the water from the top tank incase of power outtage).

sorry for repeating myself a lot lol just want to be as clear as possible!

cheers for any help or advice you can give.

 

[Kharn]

drilled hole in FX5 OUTPUT hose above its bulkhead worked a charm!

 

[MantisO_o]

It looks good!