Outtafocus's 2gal pico-now with more Mantis

[Skimmer Juice]

feeding him snails and crabs gives him something for him to do for fun.

[Fish]

Feeding a smasher shelled foods is more than for fun. Some owners report that mantis will lose their raptorial apendages if they don't use them. Also, seeing as snails and hermits are their natural diet, it is probably a healthy way to feed. To balance Ike's diet, I feed snails and hermits once or twice a month. To keep the cost down (but his dactyls strong), I came up with the technique of stuffing krill inside of a $0.25 snail shell... kinda like gift wrapping.
The damsel will probably get eaten eventually - my first damsel got eaten after two weeks... that's how long it took for it to drop its gaurd. A damsel is inexpensive and it's probably good to have fresh fish once in a while...
I really like your tank so far, it's awesome to see the mantis revolution continue!

- Chad

[outtafocus]

Thanks for the kind remarks.
Of the four hermits and two snails I placed in the tank on sunday, only one snail and one hermit remains.

The damsel is still alive, but I do worry for him. When the damsel is scared (by me walking by) he will dive into a little cave area under the rock. But with a mantis watching over his shoulder I dont believe its the safest hide out. To quote JRR Tolkiens' The Hobbit, " Out of the frying pan , into the fire"

Chad, does your mantis ever drag the shell fragments back into his lair? Mine will do her smashing, eject all the fragments, so they are strewn all over, then the next time I look at the tank, I see all the shells stacked in her alternate entrance.

[Skimmer Juice]

my mantis shrimp smashes all of his snails and crabs in his house and then puts the broken shells in the roof of his cave kinda likegrout or something. Just out of curiosity how do you tell if it is a male or female?

[Fish]

outtafocus,
Oh ya, Ike has never given me back a single shell... he's got a serious stash in there. They really like to fortify their bunkers - infact I caught Ike breaking off chunks of my sps to use as building materials. After I saw that, I moved some LR rubble to block his cave entrance better so that he doesn't feel the need to continue harvesting material for the 'sps beaver dam' he was working on...

- Chad

[Edmonton Eskimo]

that's a cool tank! I have the exact same tank with a smithii in there. Do you find the Ac filter too much flow? For my heater I have one of those little 7w hydor heaters. Only problem I have with it is you can't turn it on or off.

[rudy]

Very cool..

I would ditch the heater in there. You can get heating pads for a small tank that are 7.5 watts. You can buy them at Pisces for $20. Chiragra are extremely hard hitters.

What color is that Chiragras Meral spots though? Can you get a pic?