hi i need a little advice if you please.
i set up a nano in march this year with the intention of keeping a few soft corals and some fish, it is a 2ftx1.5ftx1.5ft tank lit with 150w MH and filtered with an external filter, 10 kg of LR and a refugium.
i added the lr first along with some turbo snails and red legged hermit crabs, after the cycle i added some zoas, mushrooms and bush corals, i then sat back for a few weeks to watch its progress and to decide what fish and corals i will add next.
i became fascinated with the life that was developing in the tank and on the rock, pods of all sorts, starfish, macro algae, zoas and even some kind of bright pink acro had appeared. I put of buying fish to give this life and any others that might appear a chance to survive.
after a couple of months i see more hitchikers, a very small green goniopora, crabs of various species including a porceline crab and a one inch long black and white mantis shrimp that lives in a small hole in the rock.
ok, so far so good, ive not lost any corals and all other livestock is doing well, i will not be putting fish in this tank at all because of the mantis shrimp and the crabs which i very much want to keep, ive moved some of the crabs into the fuge but i still need to catch the porceline crab and another one thats really quite colourful.
i managed to get the mantis shrimp to take flake food which i dangle in front of his home with the aid of a kind of small turkey baster, sometimes i soak it in some liquid coral food before i offer it up, he seems to like it, i know the crabs do.
i checked out the good doctors mantis info/id page but couldnt find a match there, it lives in a small cave it appears to have made itself so im guessing its a smasher.
one more thing, today i found a bright blue mantis shrimp carapace on the sand, at least i think it was a carapace and not just a dead shrimp, it seemed slightly translucent but stayed in one piece when i moved it, it became a snack for the other mantis
questions, despite the fact the other crustaceans are all bigger than the mantis, am i dooming them all to die for sure if i leave them in there? will the mantis eat my snails? will it destroy any of my corals? do you think it can live on the diet i feed it? it looks like i have more than one mantis, what do i do about that?
i want to do whats best for the mantis i have so any advice is very welcome
i set up a nano in march this year with the intention of keeping a few soft corals and some fish, it is a 2ftx1.5ftx1.5ft tank lit with 150w MH and filtered with an external filter, 10 kg of LR and a refugium.
i added the lr first along with some turbo snails and red legged hermit crabs, after the cycle i added some zoas, mushrooms and bush corals, i then sat back for a few weeks to watch its progress and to decide what fish and corals i will add next.
i became fascinated with the life that was developing in the tank and on the rock, pods of all sorts, starfish, macro algae, zoas and even some kind of bright pink acro had appeared. I put of buying fish to give this life and any others that might appear a chance to survive.
after a couple of months i see more hitchikers, a very small green goniopora, crabs of various species including a porceline crab and a one inch long black and white mantis shrimp that lives in a small hole in the rock.
ok, so far so good, ive not lost any corals and all other livestock is doing well, i will not be putting fish in this tank at all because of the mantis shrimp and the crabs which i very much want to keep, ive moved some of the crabs into the fuge but i still need to catch the porceline crab and another one thats really quite colourful.
i managed to get the mantis shrimp to take flake food which i dangle in front of his home with the aid of a kind of small turkey baster, sometimes i soak it in some liquid coral food before i offer it up, he seems to like it, i know the crabs do.
i checked out the good doctors mantis info/id page but couldnt find a match there, it lives in a small cave it appears to have made itself so im guessing its a smasher.
one more thing, today i found a bright blue mantis shrimp carapace on the sand, at least i think it was a carapace and not just a dead shrimp, it seemed slightly translucent but stayed in one piece when i moved it, it became a snack for the other mantis
questions, despite the fact the other crustaceans are all bigger than the mantis, am i dooming them all to die for sure if i leave them in there? will the mantis eat my snails? will it destroy any of my corals? do you think it can live on the diet i feed it? it looks like i have more than one mantis, what do i do about that?
i want to do whats best for the mantis i have so any advice is very welcome
