Peacock mantis shrimp:starting 20gal first salt

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
Final question then i can close the thread. WHat is the best heater??? i will have a condy or 2 and a mantis shrimp
 
a simple stealth 100w heater would work quite well. I've yet to have a mantis mess with my crabs or snails(I've had 3, N. wennarae G. glabrous and G. viridis) on any sort of a serious level. my current mantis, a viridis, has only eaten 1 fish(a juvie molly) while my wennerae ignored my fish and most of my snails. both didn't hesitate to take frozen foods (krill, mysis, squid and a few mixes) and for live foods seemed to prefer shrimp. yesterday my viridis took out his first crayfish and has eaten a few ghost shrimp. not once have either of my mantis messed with corals, the only damage they will do to any corals is if they are moving them around to cover their burrows at night. for foods stick with live (shrimp, small crayfish and small crabs) and frozen foods of SW origin. don't worry about your mantis breaking your tank, 20L generally have decently thick glass and the risk is simply far over exaggerated. if you are worried about it the biggest risk is from burrowing mantis, the solution is to have a reasonably deep sandbed(3~4") and put a sheet or two of acrylic over the bottom pane of glass.
check out the profile for peacocks on Roy's list, there's a few other neat mantis to look into as well, my fav is G. smithii
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/arthro...ostraca/royslist/species.php?name=o_scyllarus
 
I am goin to use #10 grade crushed coral for bottom(7-8cms deep) and imma use the condy anenomies. Ive only heard problems from one person on this thread and that was who i was talkin with earlier. Imma try to breed crays its somethin ive been wanting to do so imma breed those and try to feed them the crays. I might try one coral with it to see how he acts. So rite now its 1 condy, 1 mantis(peacock), and mayb one coral(open to suggestions on the coral somethin to make it look nice).


P.S. Is 20l 20long or 20 liters?
 
20L means 20 gallons long. you will likely have nitrate problems with crushed coral and condys(nems in general) are very difficult to keep without very pristine water, good luck. for corals i'd go with zoas and shrooms, pretty, very easy and hardy, also cheap.
 
ive kept a peacock mantis in my reef for years.keep in mind its a simple reef with only mushrooms polyps,a large frogspawn a rose anome w/ maroon clown,and a green carpet anome.all i can say is its a bit of upkeep compared to a reef w/ cleaner critters but it looks cool
 
i just saw a mantis shrimp (peacock kill a blue ring octopus on youtube...
 
MonsterFishKeepers.com