A friend I work with decided she didn't want to maintain her acrylic 30 gallon long tank anymore and offered it to me. I was originally thinking I'd set up a FOWLR, but when I stopped by my LFS to drop off the freshwater fish that had been living in the tank, the manager pointed out that it would make a great Mantis tank. A couple of months ago the LFS had a large Mantis shrimp that they'd ordered for someone and I really liked it, but didn’t have a tank for one. So it didn't take any convincing to get me to change my mind and get on board with setting up a Mantis tank instead.
The cave:
Today I picked up a 3" wide ABS plumbing T to build the cave. I'm going to cap the end shown bottom left in the picture. I'm then going to butt that right up against the end of the tank. I'm going to cover the pipe with live rock, building up a hill that will top out at the top of the pipe that goes straight up. This will give the Mantis 2 different entry points to his home. I'll add some additional live rock, mainly rubble, that the Mantis can use to redecorate and if I can find a nice long piece of Tonga, I'd like to cover it in Zoas and have it stretch end to end. I'll also add some different types of algae to give the tank more color.
Tomorrow I'm going to buff out the tank and pick up sand & water. (I don't mix my own water yet.) When I do a water change on my established tank this week, I'll have about 10 gallons of water to move to this tank. For the next couple of weeks I'll keep adding old water from my established tank to the new tank to get it fired up.
My LFS is going to be on the lookout for a nice, small Peacock Mantis that I can watch grow up. I'll add pics as the tank progresses.
The cave:
Today I picked up a 3" wide ABS plumbing T to build the cave. I'm going to cap the end shown bottom left in the picture. I'm then going to butt that right up against the end of the tank. I'm going to cover the pipe with live rock, building up a hill that will top out at the top of the pipe that goes straight up. This will give the Mantis 2 different entry points to his home. I'll add some additional live rock, mainly rubble, that the Mantis can use to redecorate and if I can find a nice long piece of Tonga, I'd like to cover it in Zoas and have it stretch end to end. I'll also add some different types of algae to give the tank more color.
Tomorrow I'm going to buff out the tank and pick up sand & water. (I don't mix my own water yet.) When I do a water change on my established tank this week, I'll have about 10 gallons of water to move to this tank. For the next couple of weeks I'll keep adding old water from my established tank to the new tank to get it fired up.
My LFS is going to be on the lookout for a nice, small Peacock Mantis that I can watch grow up. I'll add pics as the tank progresses.