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

[wwarby]

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.

Thanks @Latte

Yeah I agree with you on the ethics of cycling with corals but as @Tired said it may be a questionable strategy just in terms of having the corals thrive. I'm not in a rush to get to that point anyway. My nitrites are stubbornly high at the moment (still around 1.5 this morning) and it'll be easier to eliminate that problem if I don't change anything else in the meantime. I want to get nitrites and nitrates down to safe levels before I start introducing anything else, not least because I suspect I could make those existing levels go even worse if I start experimenting with corals or fish, and that could put Oatmeal in greater harm than she's already in, poor thing.

 

[Latte]

This is the idea for reference: https://reefbuilders.com/2021/05/25/how-to-cycle-a-reef-aquarium-right-away-with-corals-first/

Thanks @Latte

Yeah I agree with you on the ethics of cycling with corals but as @Tired said it may be a questionable strategy just in terms of having the corals thrive. I'm not in a rush to get to that point anyway. My nitrites are stubbornly high at the moment (still around 1.5 this morning) and it'll be easier to eliminate that problem if I don't change anything else in the meantime. I want to get nitrites and nitrates down to safe levels before I start introducing anything else, not least because I suspect I could make those existing levels go even worse if I start experimenting with corals or fish, and that could put Oatmeal in greater harm than she's already in, poor thing.

 

[nmotz]

Haven’t had time to read every post in this thread, but it is quite common for mantis shrimp to remain in the burrow for the first month or so. As they adjust to their surroundings and if there is live food in the tank, they will come out more frequently.

It’s not automatic entertainment in most cases. Peacocks have a break-in period. I was at the same place as you with my first Peacock and all of a sudden he just started coming out all the time. I fed ghost shrimp and he came out even more. My second Peacock was the same. My third (current) Peacock is not active at all if he’s too well-fed, but when he sees me he comes out to say hi nearly every time.

All said, totally up to you whether you want to wait it out or not. But I suspect you will *eventually* have an awesome companion if you do wait. I do think you made an error with the PVC pipe dimensions but that’s part of the game. I’ve done that before too! This hobby is not always straightforward, especially in the first year or so.

Hope things work out for the best!

 

[dsloan]

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 got one on a piece of live rock probably 15 years ago. I didn’t know what was killing and eating my fish. Had plenty of coral it took me about 6-8 weeks to finally see it and get it out of my 150 then I proceeded to flush that sucker down the toilet. End of story.

 

[Tired]

Not a humane way to kill a mantis. Remember, it's not there out of malice- you moved its home into a buffet. What was it supposed to do?

Also not the best post to a thread for people who like mantis shrimp, I think.

 

[Latte]

Cruel and irresponsible tbh

 

[Hadla]

Same as above, no reason to kill it when there are lots of people who would give it a home

 

[Latte]

Same as above, no reason to kill it when there are lots of people who would give it a home

I do understand the frustration if it's taking out your loved fish, I'm sure most people wouldn't hesitate to take a shovel to a snake they found eating their dog... But it's not really fair to take out frustration on an animal just doing what it was made to do

 

[Mark Gray]

Back many years ago around the mid to late 90s. We got rock shipped almost straight from the South Pacific, it came wrapped in wet news paper in bags. I was told it was best to dip my new Rock for 20 minutes in fresh water when it came, to help get rid of pests. The tank was a 280 and had been running I think a year and a half. I had a blue hippo tang that was as big as my hand one night it vanished. We looked everywhere. Maybe two weeks later we lost a clown fish. I talked with a guy out of Tennessee his name was John Turlock he said throw a shrimp in and see what happens. I had a mantis shrimp I had to take my rock out and break it to get him out. I should have kept him but that tang was very expensive. Won't say what happened to him but he wasn't in my tank anymore.

 

[Tired]

I do understand having to get rid of a mantis, and if you can't find a good home for it, HUMANELY killing it is about the only option left. But I don't think talking about that on this thread is really ideal, the same way a thread about pet snakes isn't a place for talking about how you've had to kill venomous snakes to safely get them away from where your children play.

 

[Hadla]

I do understand the frustration if it's taking out your loved fish, I'm sure most people wouldn't hesitate to take a shovel to a snake they found eating their dog... But it's not really fair to take out frustration on an animal just doing what it was made to do

I agree with that and what other people stated… sorry if you took my comment the wrong way. At least humanely kill it… don’t understand why people still think it’s ok to flush live animals

 

[wwarby]

Haven’t had time to read every post in this thread, but it is quite common for mantis shrimp to remain in the burrow for the first month or so. As they adjust to their surroundings and if there is live food in the tank, they will come out more frequently.

It’s not automatic entertainment in most cases. Peacocks have a break-in period. I was at the same place as you with my first Peacock and all of a sudden he just started coming out all the time. I fed ghost shrimp and he came out even more. My second Peacock was the same. My third (current) Peacock is not active at all if he’s too well-fed, but when he sees me he comes out to say hi nearly every time.

All said, totally up to you whether you want to wait it out or not. But I suspect you will *eventually* have an awesome companion if you do wait. I do think you made an error with the PVC pipe dimensions but that’s part of the game. I’ve done that before too! This hobby is not always straightforward, especially in the first year or so.

Hope things work out for the best!

Thanks @nmotz, very encouraging to know you had the same experience with your peacocks. I'm persevering for now, accepting that you may well be right about the PVC pipe dimensions but I don't have the confidence to attempt to change that for now, so hoping it won't matter as much as you think it.

I'll experiment with more or less food over time. It's been suggested on this thread that feeding to the point where she starts to reject food may make her less violent to tank mates, but I think I've observed the same behaviour you describe - hunger makes her more active in the tank. I'm erring towards less food at the moment to try not to let my nitrite problem get any worse. She'll be getting fed today and will have gone four days without food.

 

[wwarby]

I'm not gonna wade into the toilet disposal thing, but it does make me wonder... what do you do if you have a fish or invert you don't want and you can't find a good home for it? I can't imagine myself killing Oatmeal under any circumstances, but if I were to decide I'd had enough and after a few weeks on the "free to a good home" section in the forums nobody had shown any interest, what would I do?

I wonder the same about fish I might put in as tank mates. Consensus seems to be that a damsel or a six line wrasse (or both?) are good choices for mantis tank mates (insofar as there is such a thing), but the damsel in particular seems to be quite an unpopular fish due to it's aggression - it's also very cheap to buy a quarantined tank-bred one from an LFS so I can't imagine anyone is going to be beating a path to my door for a "second hand" one if I try it and things don't work out, even if it is offered for free.

 

[Mark Goode]

I'm not gonna wade into the toilet disposal thing, but it does make me wonder... what do you do if you have a fish or invert you don't want and you can't find a good home for it?

I had a goldfish I didn't want once. I shot it.

Okay, it was a pretty lousy thing to do. It was near 50 years ago and I was young and stupid.

 

[nmotz]

Thanks @nmotz, very encouraging to know you had the same experience with your peacocks. I'm persevering for now, accepting that you may well be right about the PVC pipe dimensions but I don't have the confidence to attempt to change that for now, so hoping it won't matter as much as you think it.

I'll experiment with more or less food over time. It's been suggested on this thread that feeding to the point where she starts to reject food may make her less violent to tank mates, but I think I've observed the same behaviour you describe - hunger makes her more active in the tank. I'm erring towards less food at the moment to try not to let my nitrite problem get any worse. She'll be getting fed today and will have gone four days without

Thanks @nmotz, very encouraging to know you had the same experience with your peacocks. I'm persevering for now, accepting that you may well be right about the PVC pipe dimensions but I don't have the confidence to attempt to change that for now, so hoping it won't matter as much as you think it.

I'll experiment with more or less food over time. It's been suggested on this thread that feeding to the point where she starts to reject food may make her less violent to tank mates, but I think I've observed the same behaviour you describe - hunger makes her more active in the tank. I'm erring towards less food at the moment to try not to let my nitrite problem get any worse. She'll be getting fed today and will have gone four days without food.

Dose Seachem Prime daily if you have nitrites… it’ll detox the water

 

[Tired]

Clove oil can be used to humanely euthanize most aquatic animals. Or any method of physically destroying the brain all in one motion, like pithing or shooting. Those are the best options for things like fireworms, that are unlikely to have any takers.

Though, I don't think you'll have a hard time finding a home for a peacock mantis shrimp. They're so pretty.

 

[Hadla]

If I have something I no longer want, I’ll trade it into my lfs but it doesn’t happen very often

 

[Latte]

I agree with that and what other people stated… sorry if you took my comment the wrong way. At least humanely kill it… don’t understand why people still think it’s ok to flush live animals

Fwiw I agree with you, was just trying to give some explanation.

I'm not gonna wade into the toilet disposal thing, but it does make me wonder... what do you do if you have a fish or invert you don't want and you can't find a good home for it? I can't imagine myself killing Oatmeal under any circumstances, but if I were to decide I'd had enough and after a few weeks on the "free to a good home" section in the forums nobody had shown any interest, what would I do?

I wonder the same about fish I might put in as tank mates. Consensus seems to be that a damsel or a six line wrasse (or both?) are good choices for mantis tank mates (insofar as there is such a thing), but the damsel in particular seems to be quite an unpopular fish due to it's aggression - it's also very cheap to buy a quarantined tank-bred one from an LFS so I can't imagine anyone is going to be beating a path to my door for a "second hand" one if I try it and things don't work out, even if it is offered for free.

Might be different if you live out woop woop but pretty much anything that lives in water, I could give away for free to a hobbyist or to an LFS in my area. You will have no issue with a peacock and will probably be able to find someone to sell it to rather than even giving it away if you wanted.

 

[wwarby]

Right, my water quality issues seem to finally be under control. I won't make any sudden moves and will keep testing, but ammonia is barely detectable and nitrites are down to 0.2ppm from a high of 1.5, nitrates down to 25ppm from a high of at least 100 so I definitely seem to be on the back end of the cycle.

Oatmeal has been more active lately than when I started this thread, though still not as visible as I'd like - I probably see her for about 30-60 minutes a day poking her head out, and maybe 5 minutes she's roaming the tank which is is great compared to where I was before.

I think I want to have one more go at getting her to make friends with some fish. I know it's risky, and if it doesn't work out then I'll make a decision on whether I want to find her a new home but if it works I think I'll be happy with this tank for the long term. I've found a fellow reefer nearby who's willing to take the fish if I feel like they're imperilled and need to rehouse them.

So here's my thinking... I don't want to buy lots of fish at once because it seems riskier in all sorts of ways - more for Oatmeal to try to catch, more risk the fish don't get along with each other, water quality issues, more risk of disease, more money wasted on fish I could be giving away a few days later and so on. However, I've read over and over that you should add your most aggressive fish last, and yet it seems like my best chance at success with this is to choose fast swimming aggressive fish. I figure if she attacks a six line wrasse there's really no point in trying anything else after that point, but if I put that fish in on it's own, any other fish might be under threat from the wrasse. Therefore I'm thinking of doing either a six line wrasse and a yellow tail damsel at the same time, and seeing Oatmeal gets on with those two for at least a couple of weeks before trying anything else. If Oatmeal lets me I'd love to get to about 6 fish in total, but I'd be happy if I have to stop at two or three.

What I'm thinking of doing is experimenting over the next few days with feeding her to the point where she starts rejecting food so that I know how big her appetite is, then keeping the food at that level for the time being. I figure that way if she attacks the new fish I'll know it isn't because she's hungry, and it reduces the chance of her attacking in the first place.

Grateful for any thoughts on the strategy here, and whether the choice of fish is optimal. I'm obviously limited to what species I can get my hands on in the UK (ideally from my preferred LFS) and I'd prefer to err on the side of cheap and easy species, but the priority is obviously going to be that they're fast enough to evade Oatmeal's murderous clubs and territorial enough not to be too stressed by her.

 

[nmotz]

IMO, this experimentation should wait until you have no more nitrites and preferably until you have lower nitrates. I know that’s probably not what you want to hear, but I’m surprised your Peacock hasn’t suffered an untimely death at this stage. I would keep a lookout for shell rot because sometimes Peacocks get it really bad with nutrient levels like you described. What I’m saying is, try to slow this down a bit, and dose some Seachem Prime to detox the water.

Then in a few weeks when all this clears up you can start feeding him a lot. Remember, lots of food = lots of waste = lots of nitrates. You need your bio filter to catch up.

Additionally, you may encounter a situation where you rarely see your mantis if you feed him that much. I understand you don’t want him to eat fish, but in my experience, a full mantis is a lazy, lethargic mantis. I know you want him to roam about and he might not do it if he’s fed very large meals all the time.