My new mantis tank
 

I just finaly found a peacock mantis, after of nearly a year of trying. I set up a tank for her. It's a Deep Blue 30 gallons shallow rimless tank 24" x 24" x 12" with the furniture.

I will not be using any light beside ambiant light and a small LED light as peacock do not tolerate well high level of light. They can get shell rot if the light is too strong. I was thinking of setting up a PVC pipe but did not find any of the right size, either too small or too bulky, so I found a huge piece of tonga rock that had the perfect cave shape and used this to start the fondation of her cave. It worked very well and she seems to love her home. For now there is a HOT filter that will be removed once the skimmer is working properly. I will hide the wires and make it as clean as possible.

I did not get the reef ready version with corner overflow because I did not like the huge overflow and all the room it was taking. I will eventually drill a hole in it and installe an glass-hole overflow, much nicer.


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And here is the mantis, a 5 1/2" female peacock, with an attitude! At the store she was kicking everything. Now she's well behave and very sweet!

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I am already attached to her much more than she is to me :)

If you have experience with these mesmerizing creatures, please share. Especially what to feed them. I have got her a bounch of snails which she eats when she's ungry. I also feed her with fresh mussel meat. I was planning to buy a few small clam or in the shell mussel for her. I do not plan to give her fish meat or live crabs to see them fight. I like little crabs too much.

very cool!! i would be worried about putting my hand in the tank for maint lol. they creep me out slightly

All these for a mantis? :O You must really love that "pest" :razz:

Sweet setup I must say :)

Sweet? Sure. Maybe with Sweet Chili Sauce.


Let's see you handle that puppy. Cool animal but far from sweet.

Nice little tank. Cool pictures of her too!

D'awwwww! Not sure why I find them so cute, but I do!

I love my peacock mantis, Dr. Zoidberg. Mine is about 7.5" long and very tame. She takes silversides right from my fingers. I also feed her bits of squid, various snails and freshwater fiddler crabs.

Awesome tank!!! I use to have a female peacock for over a year. She was awesome and believe it or not I'd had feed her too.
This makes me wanna start up a mantis tank! congrats!

I tried to play games with "neytiri" with a laser pointer and also to try to entertain her I set up a lava lamp beside my tank so she could watch the colors and shapes morph of the lava"
Do you plan to feed live always or are you gonna get her on frozen?

A lava lamp? was she watching it?

The mussel I feed her were frozen from fresh mussel as I don't have fresh one for now. I can feed frozen since she seems to like it anyway.

what hapened to your mantis?

I have read that silverside can be detrimental if not fresh enough?

where did you get the freshwater fiddler crabs and are they expensive? did you just toss them in salwater and let the mantis kill them? I am guessing they do not live very long in saltwater?

well yesI do, but eventually when she will not be there anylonger (hope that will be far far away) that will make me a very nice frag tank. I have a Radion ready for that day.

I like to believe she did. she'd poke her head out of the cave and sit there in the direction of the lamp. I just read articles from "Roy Cardwell" from uni of berkley on certain things to stimulate them more. The laser pointer definitely did work too

I use to buy mussels with the shell still attached on one side and put them upside down so she could work out her smashers a little and also use the shells for her burrow.
I believe she might have had a very small case of shell rot, but also I had her in a Red sea max and the skimmer wasnt keeping up with the nitrates, so ultimately I believe it was the affect of nitrates that made her pass away.:cry:
I use to get fiddler crabs from pisces and do live feedings, or I would spend about 5mins on each tank in LFS's looking at them seeing if there were any hitchhiker crabs. A lot of the time I actually found crabs, especially big black ones and the LFS would either just give them to me if I knew the guy, or sell them for like 5$. Also I'd put chromis in my tank, theyd usually survive but sometimes when she was really hungry it was a good hunt and made her more active:twised:

Oh and this may sound stupid but, let your mantis hit you once! to this day I regret not letting her hit me to see what it felt like. lol

lol! huuu I think I'll pass :)

Especially that smashers also have a small spear that is still big enough to go through a finger, if she decide to use it. That should hurt! She made it clear by showing them to me once while she was cleaning herself.

I was brave enough to let my pet tarentula spider sleep on my neck but I am quite afraid of letting the mantis hit me.

She's lookin great! Very nice coloration. Great pics too!

wow, do you really have all those tanks? that's an impressive list!

I used to give my male peacock a selection of non-reef safe crabs from when Colby would get in shipments. Anything that dropped from corals or live rock he'd save for me. Also, turbo snails as well as a couple cheaper fish added movement and eventually he ate them. For the regular feedings I used thawed shrimp and clams. He went crazy for them.

Keep her water clean, those feedings pollute water quickly!

Enjoy,
Scott

haha, no thats my list from the start of my saltwater hobby. All have been shut down except a couple.

that thing is gorgeous. i've always been interested in keeping one in a small tank but they sound quite pricey to feed.

pricy to feed? not so far. I buy saltwater snails for human consumption at Kim Phat store. I pay 1.50$ for around 30 that can last a bit :)

As for other food, it's not so expensive to give a tawed shrimp either. I also buy fresh mussel cut them in half and freeze them.

I saw my first mantis a couple weeks ago at Concept and they are so unbelievably cool looking creatures! Yours is beautiful and I love the tank set up you have!! Good luck with her, sounds like a bit of a character already!!

Wil they bite

They don't bite, they don't need to. They can split a thumb open with the speed of a 22 caliber gun with their smashers, plus they have a 1/2" spear that can unfold at the end of the smashers that they can stab your fingers with and probably go right through it. That's got to hurt quite bad.

Here in this picture you can see the spear that can unfold and they can strike a finger or a hang with it. So they can hit with the spear folded and only smash, or they can also unfold their spear and strike with it.


http://www.mpro-ject.de/dactylus.jpg

Any updates on how the mantis is doing?