Thor the Havanensis

Nightwitch

New member
Well, I got my O. havanensis from KP Aquatics (Formerly Sea Life Inc). He arrived this morning, ahead of schedule, looking totally alert and happy in spite of the long flight from balmy Florida to blustery Wisconsin. I was shocked that he was in such good shape considering that it was snowing as I brought the package into my house. I was also given a free Yellow Rod Gorgonian with him. Really beautiful. I know nothing about corals, but I put it on a piece of live rock and I'm hoping for the best.

As for Thor, he's awesome:

Thor_zps463e17dd.jpg


So far, I've had 5 different mantis shrimp in my life, including Thor. All the rest were female O. scyllarus. So, he's my first havanensis and my first male. First thing I noticed about him was that he tends to be more inquisitive than every peacock I've owned save one (and I selected her based on her inquisitiveness from a selection of 25 peacocks back when stomatopods.com was still up and running and I lived near their retail store). He's very active and interactive.

He's aggressive, but not in the same way as a peacock. First thing he did in the tank was kill and eat a baby snail I didn't even know was there (less than 5 minutes after finishing acclimation and being added to the tank). Then, he went and explored. I accidentally scared the emerald crab in the tank into the little burrow he was making. Two kicks later, and the emerald crab was running for it, just missing one leg. Thor was content with that. He then killed a small hermit crab and ate that too. So, he seems to be quite aggressive towards small crustaceans and mollusks, but relatively benign towards the big emerald crab and the damselfish that keeps checking him out.

I know I just got him, but he seems to like my tank parameters. Thanks so much to IslandofTiki for that refugium build-along. You weren't kidding about removing a baseball-sized clump a week from that thing, and I definitely think it's helping water quality. Anyway, I highly recommend KP Aquatics and O. havanensis both!
 
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Awesome! Congrats man. He looks good. How big is he?

I will be getting one from them in April.

He was described as 2 inches, and that sounds about right to me. I didn't take out a measuring tape while acclimating him or anything. He's quite small by peacock standards, but much bigger than a G. viridis I had once. He's about the same size as the blue devil damsel sharing the tank with him. I was really pleased with the KP Aquatics folks. I told them I could only be home for delivery on a Wednesday, and they got me the package on Wednesday morning, so I didn't even have to sit at home all day waiting. And the mantis was super well packaged. I'm still kind of shocked he was in such good shape after traveling 2000 miles in 12-18 hours.
 
I had one from them a few years ago. I picked it up though and they gave me a tour of the facilities. It was pretty cool to see, and they are super nice.
 
Hope all goes well with him! I'm guessing he is very fast? :)

He can move quickly, like most stomatopods, but he hasn't needed to as nothing in the tank as startled him. When he was swimming, it was more of an exploratory swim, and he kept up a decent clip, but substantially slower than I've seen other stomatopods move when startled, and a lot slower than I've seen the damselfish move if I make a sudden movement.
 
Stomatopod aactivty is more of a personality thing which is individual not species related....

I have a fair few same species individuals and they all act different some are shy some are interactive etc.
 
This species is supposed to be extremely active, and my mantis lives up to that billing. He swims a lot. He's out of the burrow a ton. I kind of wish I'd set up a 40 gallon breeder instead of a 20 long. He makes circuits of the tank and he's struck the glass a few times. Right now, he isn't doing a lot of burrow-building either. He's found a semi-open cave in the live rock that he's using, but he's not doing a lot of modification other than building a door at night and dismantling it in the morning. He is, however, going all around the tank, trying to move anything that can be moved, and trying to dig his way out besides.
 
By the way, those of you asking if O. havanensis are fast - yes. Really, really fast. Now that Thor has an established burrow, he has taken to zipping in and out of it to get food. He almost killed the damsel today, because she got in his way when the food got dropped into the water. It was kind of hilarious to watch the mantis grab and shove the damsel in the fight for the krill.
 
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