Feasibility of keeping a Mantis Shrimp at College

FeistyDodo

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Hi everyone,

I'll be moving back to college in a few weeks, and this year I will be taking my tanks with me. I already have 2 freshwater 10 gallons set up, but I am also taking the equipment for a 10 gallon salt water tank which I plan on setting up once I am settled in.

I would ideally like to set up the tank for a mantis shrimp, and since it is 10 gallons I figure that a N. wennerae would be my best option. The only problem which I am having with this idea would be when I have to transport the tank for winter break (6 weeks long) and going home for the summer. I imagine that every time I move I could be destroying the burrows which the shrimp had setup.

Would this be too much stress for the shrimp to survive or should he be fine moving 4 times a year?

Also, would a small pvc pipe work for his burrow like how people use them for peacocks?
 

Serious Reef Keeper

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Moving will be stressful for anything aquatic but generally speaking 6 weeks would be stressful for me, to say I wouldn't do it.

You gotta consider how much happiness it will bring you though. If it's worth it enough for you to ask something like this on forums, something which, to me, I probably wouldn't do, then it probably means enough to your mental health and happiness to go through with it and start thinking about how you will plan it about a month before you gotta move.

I'd just keep sand and some easier corals like gsp, maybe mushrooms or zoanthids, and xenia so you don't have to worry about killing the corals if you are gonna do that.

That's my opinion. I wouldn't let a move stop me but it depends on how far you are moving and the travel time and the road is bumpy or not, ac or not, etc.

If you set up your mantis in a yeti or something similar on the move it's probably going to be fine tbh.
 
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FeistyDodo

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Moving will be stressful for anything aquatic but generally speaking 6 weeks would be stressful for me, to say I wouldn't do it.

You gotta consider how much happiness it will bring you though. If it's worth it enough for you to ask something like this on forums, something which, to me, I probably wouldn't do, then it probably means enough to your mental health and happiness to go through with it and start thinking about how you will plan it about a month before you gotta move.

I'd just keep sand and some easier corals like gsp, maybe mushrooms or zoanthids, and xenia so you don't have to worry about killing the corals if you are gonna do that.

That's my opinion. I wouldn't let a move stop me but it depends on how far you are moving and the travel time and the road is bumpy or not, ac or not, etc.

If you set up your mantis in a yeti or something similar on the move it's probably going to be fine tbh.
I do personally think that I would get a lot of joy out of the tank since I love the behavior of inverts. As for the other livestock, I plan on doing other life from Florida such as macro algae, gorgonians, and riccordia. Ill probably stay away from zoanthids just because of the risk of palytoxin from moving them so often.

I am luckily only 2 hours from my college so travel time shouldn't be bad.
 

Hadla

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Yeah some of the smaller species are really hardy. I wouldn’t worry about messing up his burrows, when you have to move him out of the tank for transporting, just give him a small piece of pvc pipe to hide in and he should be fine!
 

Latte

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Definitely wouldn't worry about messing up their borrows (unless of course you do that while the shrimp is in them...). In fact I think most will benefit from the enrichment of a new or changed environment
 

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