Sand Bed for Peacock Mantis

[ponokareefer]

I am changing my existing system for a Peacock Mantis shrimp and wondering if it matters how deep a sand bed I use? Does it matter if it is 1/2 inch or 3 inches?

 

[Kharn]

I am changing my existing system for a Peacock Mantis shrimp and wondering if it matters how deep a sand bed I use? Does it matter if it is 1/2 inch or 3 inches?

No sand bed, the larger smasher and smashers in general cannot manipulate or build with sand, they need rubble like dead coral chunks etc.

 

[ponokareefer]

No sand bed, the larger smasher and smashers in general cannot manipulate or build with sand, they need rubble like dead coral chunks etc.

I had thought they needed the sand to move around on as they couldn't move very well on glass.

I have a tonne of rubble for it to close up the entrances to the 3" PVC home I made for it.

 

[Calappidae]

Sandbed is just for looks in the this case, just avoid sharp substrate such as volcanic sand and crushed coral. You said it has a 3" pvc burrow, it has no need to dig in the sand.

However as a precautionary, you could go 3" above an acrylic sheet to avoid one hammering the bottom of the tank..

My large 7" male O. scyllarus creates a dust storm everytime he move's his pleopods in one corner... and this is 1.25–1.95 mm diameter grain size..

 

[Islandoftiki]

Coral rubble and coarse aragonite will become a nitrate factory, or at least it was a huge problem in Betty's old tank that I inherited (and that tank was only like 6 months old).

I used a mix of medium/fine grain live sand for her new tank and it works great. Just make sure you provide lots of little bits and pieces of live rock for building. Betty moves the sand around just fine...



I used about 1 1/2" deep sandbed and keep it stirred to prevent any buildup of crud. Actually, between the damsel and Betty, they both keep the sand bed pretty well sifted through. I'm always having to move it back when they pile it over on one side of the tank or the other.

 

[TundraGuy]

I have a 4 inch deep mix of aragonite and almost 20lbs of Marco rock rubble mixed into the sand so when my peacock digs he runs into the rock pieces and has something to manipulate. I invite anyone to come over and test for nitrates in my system. I do have above normal filtration and a turn over rate of 30 times 1100 gph through my filtration keep down nastie stuff. Also. When I do water changes I do vac the sand bed. I think people neglect vacuuming a mantis sand bed forgetting that in a full reef you can have livestock turn it for you. But in a mantis tank you have to go in and remove the problem areas. I clean or change my prefilters out every week use a day biopellet reactor into my skimmer ato and dual return pumps. I am also not above removing the live rock keeping it wet just so I can Gvac the entire sand bed.

With substrate and this type of mantis you have a lot of choices. Pick something that you are willing to maintain and give the mantis stuff to play with. The tanks we keep these animals in tend not to provide enough activities for the animal to play with. Just my opinions.

 

[Islandoftiki]

The tanks we keep these animals in tend not to provide enough activities for the animal to play with. Just my opinions.

I agree with this. I give Betty new pieces of rock on a regular basis so she has different shapes to play with. She almost always grabs them straight away and starts planning where to put them. There is quite a bit of usable pieces of rubble mixed into the sand bed that she will dig up and use. Her construction projects keep her pretty busy throughout the day. She also gets her food packed into empty snail/hermit shells on a regular basis. Plus, if you've seen my videos, you know I present her with unusual object to play with on a regular basis.

 

[Kharn]

I think coral rubble is good but not done the way I first did, trying to give the large smasher as much "tools" to build with, the fact is a simple and sad one that it's nigh impossible to give a large O.scyllarus all it needs to build a burrow it would in the wild...

Their burrows in the wild can basically be limitless in size and a never ending build, I saw a burrow of an O.scyllarus on Nat Geo larger then a diver who sat down beside it on the sea floor, there is no way we can provide that and the O.scyllarus just seemed to grab everything not fixed down and stack it on top of its burrow like a pile.

My new approach is similar but more understanding.

I use the same substrate as I have always for these smashers, large dead chunks of coral, however I only place in enough to jusssssssst cover the base of the tank, it's more for aesthetically pleasing the eye as I don't like bare bottom, however it still allows the Stomatopod to gather up useful pieces of rubble to use for the entrance/exit to the burrows I provide, I just replace what they took from the base with a few more pieces of rubble to hide the tanks bottom.

By doing this I have made it really easy to simply syphon over the substrate and suck up all nasty to get it clean and sparkly again in my smallest system STAND A I actually syphon the gunk into the Refugium in the last compartment, spraying all the 'waste' over the macro algae, seems to like it and it's even easier .

 

[babystang]

Mine loved to decorate with chaeto morpha algae. I would also redo the landscape of the tank and add different pieces of pvc every couple months to keep her environment interesting.

 

[JPF]

With substrate and this type of mantis you have a lot of choices. Pick something that you are willing to maintain and give the mantis stuff to play with. The tanks we keep these animals in tend not to provide enough activities for the animal to play with. Just my opinions.

I really like this idea. A bored animal is an unhealthy animal.