thank you for the compliments.
In a mantis reef all the small frags have to be glued down to something that the mantis cant move. I ignored that rule once and lost a frag of zoos to him... that was my fault. other than that, small mantisd are pretty much reef-safe imo. only thing is that, like i said, you have to keep up with water changes since they dont allow you much in terms of CUC except turbo snails.
what kind of corals would you like to keep? you obviously have enough light for whatever you want, so the main constraint would be nutrients in the water. All the corals i selected were pretty hardy and tolerant of less than pristine water. for example i would avoid the delicate acroporas, but that depends on how disciplined you are at water quality.
I would imagine a large enough clam would be safe from a small amntis like G. smithii, but i just dont think 10gal is nearly enough volume to house a sizeable enough clam. plus, with the added bioload from a mantis, the tank may be considered too high in nutrients for such a fickle thing as a clam.
I have no pvc in my tank (i just dont like the look of it) so i just got some rock with lots of holes in it, threw in a fistful of LR rubble and let the mantis build his own burrow. but there's plenty of people around who made the mantis a pvc burrow. just throw in a fistful of LR rubble and you're set. the rubble is important. you can just put it all in a pile in the back if you dont want it directly visible.
I would discourage the clown. a mantis alone is pushing the bioload for a 10gal reef and i think a fish would tip it over. that and the mantis+fish combination is never a guarantee. like you said, the clown MAY end up as dinner. mantids are pretty variable in their tolerance of fish. Id imagine in a smaller tank like ours, the aggression towards a fish would be increased.
Finding a G. smithii is not that easy really. online vendors rarely identify mantis species properly and anything labelled peacock or lime green mantis is a warning that they dont really know what they're talking about. The only way to get a G. smithii is to know how to distinguish it from other mantis species and go out and look for it on wysiwyg sections of sites and at your lfs. if you cant id them, then get pics, post em and we should be able to tell you what species you're looking at.
if you want to avoid the hassle of finding a G. smithii, then take a look at N. wennerae (a very close next best tank inhabitant imo). Their requirements are identical to that of G. smithii as is their activity level. they are by far the most easily found mantis because TBS has them and only them. 50$, not a bad deal since you know exactly what to expect.
