Haha thanks Lee!
I have talked to the LFS's here and they all tell me that they can order mantises (sp?) in pretty easy. For some reason though, pet stores always seem to get peacocks. Big Als told me that they can get them no questions asked - but they are only able to check "mantis shrimp" and don't have any control over what kind comes in - and in recent history, they have only once gotten a mantis that wasn't a peacock and it was BIGGER than the peacocks! (7 inches
)
Besides the size thing, a peacock is a spearer so they like to burrow into the sand and I don't have near enough substrate in my tank to accomidate one.
The real irony is that the type of mantis that I am looking for is more common and tons of people get them as hitchhikers
. Maybe I should just start buying large quantities of quality live rock... kind of like lottery tickets, one's bound to pay off
.
Sorry for the longish post,
- Chad