A few weeks in, I'm already starting to regret getting a mantis shrimp

[wwarby]

How long have you actually had the mantis (sorry if I missed, just skimmed the thread). I've had mine for maybe 4 or 5 months now I think and she has progressively become more and more interactive and confident being out of her cave while I'm around. I'm unsure if this is helpful as I don't know your setup, but you could try angling the pipe so that the entrances are visible. Mine spends maybe 60% of the day with its head sitcking out looking around from inside her pipe/cave, 30% hidden somewhere and 10% actively running around the tank exploring, moving rocks etc.

For the first two months I owned her, that ratio was more like 20% sticking head out, 80% completely hidden and very occasionally I'd see her outside of her cave.

Behaviour also changes signficiantly around moulting.

I'd echo getting a faster fish, damsels and six line wrasses are both likely to fare pretty well. I also think adding some weedy (fast growing, very hardy) corals such as green star polyps, Xenia and maybe some zoas would be a great idea. Getting much deeper into corals than that can be very expensive both in time and money, and I wouldn't recommend that for you right now.

FWIW they do seem to have personalities. My shrimp lives with a Molly I acclimated from fresh water (great fish, constantly swimming around eating algae) and has absolutely no interest in it, the snails or any hermit crabs around the tank. However, I add glass shrimp to supplement her diet and when they go in she becomes a murderous maniac until they're all gone (except for one particular shrimp that's been in there for months that she doesn't ever bother??).

Adding some macro algae could also be a great idea, add some more colour and movement to the tank easily, and it will also help suck up nitrates and keep the water clean.

Best of luck!

I've had her for coming on 6 weeks now, so it's really encouraging to know that yours spent more of her time out and about and being visible further down the timeline than I've reached yet. My first few weeks sound very much like yours. It's definitely possible as others have said that my water quality issues are messing with her unpredictable ways. Funnily enough as I've been replying to posts this morning for the last 30 minutes or so, she's been in and out of the burrow entrances patrolling the tank and swimming up the walls of the tank which is lovely to see.

I do have all three burrow entrances front facing so that I get the pleasure of her company whenever she's poking her head out.

Also great to hear your take on the damsel and/or six line wrasse idea. I definitely feel like that's the way I want to go once I get my water quality under control. Same with corals - the advice I'm getting consistently from every source is go with cheap, easy soft corals like xenia, green star, zoas and toadstools. seems eminently sensible, although again, when my water quality is stable - no other creature deserves to go through the nitrogen cycle I've put Oatmeal through. I'll definitely also experiment with some cleanup crew at some point too.

I've also heard the macro algae recommendation before too and I think it's a good idea which I'm going to look into.

Thanks again for all your advice - this post really helped me

 

[wwarby]

I had a peacock for a few years and mine was very personable and out often and would come up to the tank to see me.

Maybe yours just needs to settle in or is bored? Every mantis I had was shy and wary when I got it. They are pretty intelligent and need time to trust you.

Ever heard of Betty the mantis shrimp? She wasn’t mine but one who I followed. She would sit on hands and play with toys you gave her. They are curious creatures. I would give my pet mantis objects as well to play with. Mine would run up to the front glass when I got home from work as they can learn you bring food and toys.

The glass is not an issue and I think you need to just let go of that anxiety. They break tanks when kept in paper thin ones that are too small like a adult peacock on a 2-5g tank. I literally broke one of those cheap 5g pecto tanks by just bumping it. It is not an issue with larger tanks. It doesn’t happen.

This is Betty. My peacock was named Ivy and would sit on my arm during maintenance sometimes as well.

He has lots of videos of her.

Definitely do not let a mantis crawl or sit on you when they are new. Lol They can be aggressive at first.

That is a crazy video! I had to put my hand quite deep into the tank on Friday to insert my piece of live rock and I felt like I was diffusing a bomb. I was watching Oatmeal like a hawk (she was sitting one of the entrances to her burrow) and I was ready to drop the rock and run for my life if she moved

Oatmeal has learned now that my black plastic tongs are the bringer of food, and whenever they enter the tank regardless of the reason she swims up to them. Yesterday she swam upwards to them so fast she practically dived out of the tank!

I appreciate the advice about the glass too. She hasn't whacked the outer glass very often at all really and every time I jump up and look around because I've heard a whacking noise she seems to be inside her burrow where it's safe to whack things. It does seem almost like an urban myth about them breaking glass - I'm sure it's actually happened but I don't think I've actually heard a single first hand account of it.

What kind of toys did you get for your mantis? I have rock rubble in my tank - I could certainly put more in there but she hasn't shown a lot of interest in the stuff that's in there already. Are we talking literal toys like you might give to a parrot or a dog?

 

[TheDragonsReef]

To me, the fun of owning a mantis is feeding time. Its part of their life style to live in the burrow so you can't expect them to be out and about constantly. One thing you can do to make it more enjoyable is make their burrow so that it's up against the glass so you can see them all the time. I did that with my smithii mantis setup.

 

[wwarby]

Reading your post seems like maybe some perspective would be useful so here's mine:

When I started my tank my dream was to have a clam, something that reminded me of diving the great barrier reef and the giant clams living there. Getting the tank started was rough like it is for many, even some of my best plans were misleading and led to crashes etc in unexpected ways I'd never even read about. I can tell you starting the tank as a reef but not adding the clam because I knew it would need to be stable or it'd just die.

What I did learn is that there's SO MUCH more to this hobby than only the focus on a single animal. It took me two years to add the clam because I thought I'd kill it (and probably would have). Leading up to that date I found interest in a number of different animals (Coral/Fish/Shimp/Snails/Starfish/etc). I think that part is what has made the experience rewarding and something I want to continue.

My struggle to really get things stable and manageable for the introduction of the clam helped me learn so much and find a much stronger interest. I did get that clam, I call him Clammy. But the best part is there's a whole ecosystem in there that I built up in the interrum that is totally bad butt, to me at least.

So maybe if you regroup and find a more diverse interest this would be more fulfilling and something you'd enjoy spending more time with.

Thanks @wculver, that's also really helpful. I definitely am fixated on the mantis shrimp - it's why I got into the hobby and I find her as fascinating today as I did the day I got her. For me it very much wasn't a case of "I want an aquarium, what's the best thing I could put in it? how about a mantis shrimp?" It was more a straightforward case of "I want a mantis shrimp" My fascination with them started when I read The Oatmeal's comic on the subject, but after chancing upon a specimen in a public aquarium and watching them in documentaries they became cemented in my head as the best animal in the world. I saw one in the wild in Costa Rica on a dive and it was the absolute highlight of a trip that included hundreds of wildlife encounters including an anteater.

The reason I got into the hobby doesn't have to be the reason I stay in it of course. I love clown fish and I was really sad to have to remove the two I'd bought for the tank. They'd be the first residents to return if the mantis is ever rehomed, but I definitely like the idea of having a mixture of fish and other inverts in that scenario, although I think I'll end up lamenting my choice of tank at that point, because my 52 gallon tank is too small for a lot of my favourite fish.

 

[wwarby]

When I started this thread I had just been on holiday abroad for 11 days. My cousin who had been looking after the tank (with no experience but help from the LFS) did a stand up job, but I came back to filthy tank glass and rocks covered in brown algae that wasn't there before I left. My water parameters were still dangerous despite my cousin's efforts with the help of the LFS, and three days later, tank and filter cleaned and the worst of the algae gone, I'd barely seen a peep from Oatmeal. She seemed to have been trying to dig a tunnel under her existing burrow tube, kicking most of the sand that was covering it away and there are white marks on it where she'd been hitting it. Another reefer on a different forum suggested my burrow might be too small and I might need to redo it with larger pipework, which would entail a big redesign of the aquascape. I had only gotten rid of the clowns two days before my holiday so wasn't used to seeing the tank empty and lifeless. Her banging on the inside of the burrow was making me jump whilst I was relaxing in the evening.

All of the above came together in such a way as to make me have an "oh no, I've made a terrible and costly mistake" mentality towards the whole endeavour. In the days since I've turned my head around quite a bit. My water quality issues aren't solved yet but they're not spiralling out of control and I'm working on solutions. I feel more confident that I might have some success with fish and/or corals after the bad experience with clowns, and I feel more optimistic that if I decide the mantis isn't for me, I will try a different setup and not just abandon the hobby. Most importantly though, Oatmeal has been far more sociable in the last two or three days. I've seen more of her in the last hour than in the three days after my holiday. I'd like her to be more sociable still, but if I saw her as much every day as I have this morning I'd be happy with that I think.

Thanks very much to everyone who contributed to this thread - it's really helped me and made me appreciate the value of this online community. I hope that if I stay in the hobby and gain experience I'll be able to do the same for new reefers in the future

 

[wwarby]

To me, the fun of owning a mantis is feeding time. Its part of their life style to live in the burrow so you can't expect them to be out and about constantly. One thing you can do to make it more enjoyable is make their burrow so that it's up against the glass so you can see them all the time. I did that with my smithii mantis setup.

Yeah I definitely enjoy feeding her although usually she just grabs the food from my tongs and dives straight back into her burrow with it. One time though she ate a prawn I gave her in out in the open and it was very cool to watch - my cousin also got a (very bad quality) video of her smashing a cockel in the entrance of her burrow, which I haven't seen her do yet. I do have the burrow entrances visible, which was definitely a good idea

 

[wwarby]

A few photos of my setup as promised.

The purple/white pieces of rock are CaribSea Life Rock frag/rubble pieces I had been storing, which I added to the tank this morning as advised by @motocross. The darker ones were already in there before, but you can see there's a lot more pieces for her to play with now if she wants to, and I've tried to give her a variety of sizes (hence the white where I've smashed it up with a hammer and chisel).

This tube runs along the back of the tank with entrances under the rocks. You can see her in the photo above looking out of the one on the left, and the one on in the middle is clearly visible. The entrance on the right is turned upwards, as you can see in the side on view. She seems to like all three entrances roughly equally.

This whiter piece of rock is the new live rock I added two days ago. The rest is Caribsea life rock. It doesn't look nearly so brown and ugly under blue light as in the photos here. I'm seeing a few spots of green which I assume is the start of a plague of green hair algae I've got to look forward to.

And this is Oatmeal herself, in all her majestic glory

 

[Tamberav]

That is a crazy video! I had to put my hand quite deep into the tank on Friday to insert my piece of live rock and I felt like I was diffusing a bomb. I was watching Oatmeal like a hawk (she was sitting one of the entrances to her burrow) and I was ready to drop the rock and run for my life if she moved

Oatmeal has learned now that my black plastic tongs are the bringer of food, and whenever they enter the tank regardless of the reason she swims up to them. Yesterday she swam upwards to them so fast she practically dived out of the tank!

I appreciate the advice about the glass too. She hasn't whacked the outer glass very often at all really and every time I jump up and look around because I've heard a whacking noise she seems to be inside her burrow where it's safe to whack things. It does seem almost like an urban myth about them breaking glass - I'm sure it's actually happened but I don't think I've actually heard a single first hand account of it.

What kind of toys did you get for your mantis? I have rock rubble in my tank - I could certainly put more in there but she hasn't shown a lot of interest in the stuff that's in there already. Are we talking literal toys like you might give to a parrot or a dog?

plastic toys like colorful dice or figures. Eventually Ivy would get bored of them and toss them out her burrow again and I would fish them out.

It’s not something you keep on the tank but because they have such good eyesight and curious they will grab and check out. I would just put them in for Ivy to explore and wack and remove them after she was done.

 

[wwarby]

plastic toys like colorful dice or figures. Eventually Ivy would get bored of them and toss them out her burrow again and I would fish them out.

It’s not something you keep on the tank but because they have such good eyesight and curious they will grab and check out. I would just put them in for Ivy to explore and wack and remove them after she was done.

Really interesting. I don’t think I’ve come across that as an idea before. I’ll give it a try and see if Oatmeal likes plastic toys

 

[Tired]

Ah, enrichment! Mantis shrimp are definitely intelligent enough to appreciate novel objects. Half of their hunting is figuring out how to open the puzzle boxes that their food comes in, after all.

You might try building things out of Lego bricks. They're aquarium-safe, durable, and can be made into all sorts of different shapes to whack at.

As to breaking glass, IIRC that has to be a very large mantis. Plus, a lot of tanks nowadays are acrylic, which doesn't shatter like glass and is therefore mantis-proof. Unless your mantis is as big as you are, in which case you have problems other than some water on your floor.

 

[Dom]

I've had my peacock mantis shrimp for a few weeks now. I'd been fascinated with mantis shrimps for years and always wanted one as a pet, so dived straight in from no experience of fishkeeping at all. I've made plenty of beginner mistakes - most notably believing an LFS salesman who told me I could use bottled bacteria as an alternative to traditional tank cycling (my water quality tests proved that was a very bad idea and I'm still dealing with the results of that mistake), but my mantis shrimp is still alive and active.

I put two clown fish in the tank before the mantis arrived. I was warned not to do it, but I know at least one other reefer with clowns in his mantis tank that get left alone, and there are many other reefers with clubber mantis shrimps successfully coexisting with fish - though most seem to opt for faster and more aggressive species like the damsels or six line wrasse. I love clown fish though, so I figured it was worth a try to put my favourite fish in there since they're very cheap. It wasn't worth it. After a few days of peace, the mantis started terrorising them - chasing them around the tank repeatedly. It was horrible to watch and I took the clowns back to the LFS a couple of weeks ago.

I knew there was a pretty good chance I'd never be able to keep fish with the mantis, and that the mantis would spend most of her time in her burrow, but knowing and experiencing are two different things. For 5-15 minutes a day I've got the best pet in the world swimming around her tank, but the rest of the time it's an empty box full of wet rock, and my interest in it is fading fast. My intention was always to fill the tank with coral, but I'm pretty sure now that corals alone are not going to hold my interest.

Also I don't think I'm ever going to be at ease with the noise of her whacking the 8mm glass of my tank or (much more frequently) the inside of her PVC tubing burrow - which sound the same if you're not looking at the tank. It makes me nervous every time that she's going to break it one day. And it's possible the reason she's doing it is the 2 inch PVC tubing is too small for her (opinions vary on this). She certainly seems to be trying (unsuccessfully) to dig other caves for herself though.

I'm not sure what I want to do next, so the sensible thing is probably not to rush to a decision. My options seem to be:

1. Persevere, start adding corals and hope that over time my mantis shrimp becomes more active and visible
2. Try adding faster / more aggressive fish than clowns to give the tank some colour and interest
3. Sell or give away the mantis shrimp and re-stock with fish. This is where I'm leaning but it seems a weird outcome given I'd never had any interest in owning a reef tank except for the purpose of keeping a mantis. Also my 52 gallon tank is too small for most of the fish I'd really like to keep.
4. Cut my losses and sell everything

I know this hobby has a high attrition rate in the first year and I'm loathed to give up so quickly after I started, but if I'm this bored of my mostly empty tank already I think I need to change something quickly otherwise I'm definitely going to end up quitting.

I've never owned a mantis shrimp, and your post leads me to believe I wouldn't want one. But I would suggest that if you enjoy having it, perhaps have a separate, small tank just for the mantis?

I'm not sure what the minimum tank size is for a mantis, but if you can set it up in, say, a 20 gallon tank, then you can plumb it in to your existing setup.

 

[Tamberav]

Really interesting. I don’t think I’ve come across that as an idea before. I’ll give it a try and see if Oatmeal likes plastic toys

Outside the tank works too

 

[Tamberav]

Ah, enrichment! Mantis shrimp are definitely intelligent enough to appreciate novel objects. Half of their hunting is figuring out how to open the puzzle boxes that their food comes in, after all.

You might try building things out of Lego bricks. They're aquarium-safe, durable, and can be made into all sorts of different shapes to whack at.

As to breaking glass, IIRC that has to be a very large mantis. Plus, a lot of tanks nowadays are acrylic, which doesn't shatter like glass and is therefore mantis-proof. Unless your mantis is as big as you are, in which case you have problems other than some water on your floor.

Legos is a great idea!

You could probably get some comical horror film photos by giving the mantis a human action figure or something lol

 

[Tired]

I've never owned a mantis shrimp, and your post leads me to believe I wouldn't want one. But I would suggest that if you enjoy having it, perhaps have a separate, small tank just for the mantis?

I'm not sure what the minimum tank size is for a mantis, but if you can set it up in, say, a 20 gallon tank, then you can plumb it in to your existing setup.

This is a good idea. A mantis doesn't need a huge amount of space, as long as it has room to burrow and things to build with, and the larger tank will help to keep the water quality nice and stable for it. Or, heck- plumb a smaller tank onto this tank and put a clownfish pair in the smaller tank. A 20gal is plenty of room for a pair of clownfish and a couple of other nano fish.

 

[wwarby]

I've never owned a mantis shrimp, and your post leads me to believe I wouldn't want one. But I would suggest that if you enjoy having it, perhaps have a separate, small tank just for the mantis?

I'm not sure what the minimum tank size is for a mantis, but if you can set it up in, say, a 20 gallon tank, then you can plumb it in to your existing setup.

Yeah that’s what my LFS suggested. It’s a good idea but unfortunately there’s no space in my living room for another tank - I’d have to move a radiator, and it’d be more expense for the tank, sand, rocks, plumbing etc. which I can’t really justify at the moment. Long term though it may not be a bad way to go. 20 gallons is indeed about the minimum recommend size.

 

[wwarby]

Outside the tank works too

That’s pretty cool. I’ve recently started showing her things outside the tank like that, after noticing she follows my fingers, tongs, cleaning cloth etc when she can see things outside the tank. Earlier today I was using a turkey baster to blast off a bit of sand and dead algae from the rocks and she was chasing around after it, same when I used tongs to move some of that rock rubble, although she punched the tongs at one point so I need to be a bit careful with that. Definitely seems like she’s getting more comfortable with me around the tank day by day, which is great

 

[Latte]

I've had her for coming on 6 weeks now, so it's really encouraging to know that yours spent more of her time out and about and being visible further down the timeline than I've reached yet. My first few weeks sound very much like yours. It's definitely possible as others have said that my water quality issues are messing with her unpredictable ways. Funnily enough as I've been replying to posts this morning for the last 30 minutes or so, she's been in and out of the burrow entrances patrolling the tank and swimming up the walls of the tank which is lovely to see.

I do have all three burrow entrances front facing so that I get the pleasure of her company whenever she's poking her head out.

Also great to hear your take on the damsel and/or six line wrasse idea. I definitely feel like that's the way I want to go once I get my water quality under control. Same with corals - the advice I'm getting consistently from every source is go with cheap, easy soft corals like xenia, green star, zoas and toadstools. seems eminently sensible, although again, when my water quality is stable - no other creature deserves to go through the nitrogen cycle I've put Oatmeal through. I'll definitely also experiment with some cleanup crew at some point too.

I've also heard the macro algae recommendation before too and I think it's a good idea which I'm going to look into.

Thanks again for all your advice - this post really helped me

You have a BEAUTIFUL tank set up for Oatmeal and definitely room for a couple fish to swim around at the top. I hope you persevere!

Two quick notes: I will lean HEAVILY to the safer side of glass boxes full of salt water in your house... But there's no way that mantis breaks your tank, let go of that anxiety .

Also, corals are really more like plants, I would never cycle a tank with inverts or fish in it, but cycling a tank with corals or algae in is often actually a good idea in my opinion and is likely to lead to a greater chance of successful/diverse biome in the future. I obviously wouldn't actively try and kill a coral, but they are ethically (in my personal opinion) better viewed as plants than as animals in terms of their capacity to experience any feelings of emotions, pain, stress etc. I think corals being animals is more of a quirk of the scientific definition, than a representation of their capacity to feel or suffer.

 

[Tired]

Corals are definitely more towards plants in terms of welfare concerns like "is this creature suffering", but it's best to try not to have them in a cycling tank, simply because it's pointlessly bad for them. May as well wait until they're likely to do well.

Like how, when you set up a terrarium and have just siliconed things in, you wait for the silicone fumes to disperse. Not so the plants won't be distressed, but because there's no sense putting them in where they can be damaged.

Most of what a coral does isn't super useful when cycling a tank, though the algae and whatnot on their frag discs can certainly be helpful, and algae (which doesn't care) is definitely good to have in a cycling tank.

 

[Latte]

F

Corals are definitely more towards plants in terms of welfare concerns like "is this creature suffering", but it's best to try not to have them in a cycling tank, simply because it's pointlessly bad for them. May as well wait until they're likely to do well.

Like how, when you set up a terrarium and have just siliconed things in, you wait for the silicone fumes to disperse. Not so the plants won't be distressed, but because there's no sense putting them in where they can be damaged.

Most of what a coral does isn't super useful when cycling a tank, though the algae and whatnot on their frag discs can certainly be helpful, and algae (which doesn't care) is definitely good to have in a cycling tank.

FWIW I've never cycled with corals in the tank, but I know Jake from reefbuilders has advocated for it a lot on his podcast, and I'm likely to try it in future tanks. I think the idea is that having them in there, as well as all the stuff that comes with them, functions on a level like live rock in setting up the biome for the tank and getting it started on the right foot. After dealing with Dino's for the last 6 months, I'd be willing to try anything that would have a chance at preventing it in my next tank haha

 

[Gatorpa]

Thanks so much for the detailed response @motocross

I do have a fair amount of rock rubble in the tank Not as much as you - I have another pretty big bag full of it ready to but she's shown very little interest in the rubble I've given her so far. I gave her a pretty decent amount of waste pipe as a burrow with three entrances and that's her home - she does seem to make intermittent attempts to create a different home by burrowing, but gives up and returns to her tube burrow. Do you think adding loads more rubble would make her show interest in it, even if she's barely moved the 25 or so pieces I've already got in there?

I'm still finding my feet with feeding her, averaging one feed every 2-3 days, alternating between small frozen fish (about 1.5-2 inches long), cockles in shells and supermarket prawns. Everything I've given her she's greedily eaten so it doesn't seem as though the cause of my water quality issues is uneaten food (I see no trace of uneaten food anywhere) - I suspect my tank is just still cycling. Still I'm trying to limit food a bit now until the parameters are better.

Perhaps I need to do more experimenting with new tank mates. It's really hard though, some people like yourself have had plenty of success with tank mates, others just insist you absolutely cannot and should not put anything else in the tank with a predator like a mantis shrimp. It feels quite unethical putting other critters in the tank and just crossing my fingers they don't get killed, and I know I will be judged and criticised for doing so (probably rightly) by some forum members and LFS staff alike.

I don't need to make any immediate decisions, but I'm going to need to do something. I'm looking at the tank right now and I'm actively annoyed by the sight of it, because there's just nothing to see in there. Even a couple of fish would make a huge difference I think.

Do you have a view on whether the mantis shrimp will change her behaviour over the long run and become more active in the tank? One fellow reefer on ultimatereef.net says his mantis is out on view 80% of the day exploring her tank. I'm convinced she was out and about much more frequently when I had the clowns in there - perhaps she's just bored and there's nothing for her to see or do when she leaves the burrow so she's less interested now in coming out?

I’ll just say this…
”I am a scorpion it is what I do”.

Hoping the nature of a fish or invert will change is a fools errand.

Rehome the mantis or get a small tank for just the mantis, and put some fish in the big tank….