Ram Man's 5 gallon cube of death.

ram man

Superstar Fish
Apr 16, 2005
1,441
4
38
32
Arizona
#1
This thread is to show the progress of my 5 gallon mantis cube. I will be adding a coral this weekend, and every other weekend hopefully. Here are some pictures from the past, because the ones from now are depressing for me, half of the croals are gone, i currently only have 1 frag of zoas and a splitting mushroom coral.

This is when the cube was first started.

Here is a pic of the mantis exploring his new home.

This was my ricordia mushroom, my favorite of my corals, then i found it being eaten my an emerald crab...

Here is a pic of the mantis shrimp coming closer to the glass, either curious or wanting some mysis shrimp.

Here is a pic of him looking back at the camera.
 

ram man

Superstar Fish
Apr 16, 2005
1,441
4
38
32
Arizona
#5
reason it looks dirty and cloudy is because the pics were right after a rearrangment of the rocks and a water change to help clear the cloudyness up. Ill mkae sure to take the mag float out during the next picture taking session.

these are 2 pics of the mantis shrimps burrow

 

ram man

Superstar Fish
Apr 16, 2005
1,441
4
38
32
Arizona
#8
Another reason the tank looks dirty is because of the type of animal im keeping. Mantis shrimp are not the cleanest eaters, when he killed the emerald crab alot of clearish juices and some meat spilled out of the corpse.

Some info about mantis shrimp...

These are smart animals as far as inverts go, studies at berkeley university in california have showed that these animals are just as smart as octopi, the larger species can be a bit smarter to. In the wild mantis shrimp communicate with one another by useing polorized light, some use it by reflecting this light back to others useing their meral spots, others use fan like anntanae on their heads.

Some of their natural food consists of the following, but most of the foot depends on the type of mantis, smashers and spearers.

Smasher food list.
1. hermits crabs
2.snails
3.crabs
4.(usualy only for the peacock mantis)the blue ringed octopus.

Spearer food list.
1.fish
2.squid
4.shrimp
5.octopi

One of the problems of keeping a mantis shrimp in a small aquarium is they like to store any food they dont eat in there burrow for later, this is bad in a small aquarium due to polution.
 

ram man

Superstar Fish
Apr 16, 2005
1,441
4
38
32
Arizona
#16
well, wasnt able to get a video of him smashing a hermit, since he does his work inside of his burrow, but i do have a before and an after shot of him killing a hermit.

here he is peaking out of his burrow.




and here are the before and after shots




here is my only zoa frag...


and here is a pic for the magfloat police.
 

Sep 26, 2006
785
1
0
32
New Jersey
#19
nice tank have you tried to hand feed your mantis the one guy at my uncles lfs was trying to get a mantis out of there LR tank and it shot out of the tank and split his fingers open that were holding the net crazy things but how much do these things go for because my lfs has some but i didn't think anything of it tho i don't want one yet :D
Good luck
 

ram man

Superstar Fish
Apr 16, 2005
1,441
4
38
32
Arizona
#20
first you would need to find out what species they are selling, if its a peacock mantis shrimp then you would need to have a 29 gallon or above, a sheet of arcrylic to cover the bottom of the aquarium, and a 3 inch sandbed.
a mantis could cost anywere from 10 bucks to 80 bucks. my g.smithii cost me 50 bucks.

the smashing is cool and all, but i realy like how smart they are, mine is out all the time when im near the tank, but when any one else comes he gets freaked out and hides in his burrow.