Islandoftiki

General rule of thumb is that fish often get along fine with a smasher mantis... until they don't. Then you need a new fish.

Man, what a mess...

As these images illustrate, flood waters from superstorm Sandy left the New York Aquarium’s 14-acre facility in Coney Island virtually underwater. Recent arrival Mitik the walrus made it through safely, but aquarium staff members are still working to protect the rest of the animals and fish, whose habitats require complex filtration systems and temperature control.

Read more: Http://animaltracks.today.com/_news/2012/11/02/14886620-water-world-photos-of-the-animals-in-the-flooded-new-york-aquarium?lite

You could probably also sneak a cleaner shrimp in there, too. They add a lot of character to the tank--always out front waving their antennae around. My two cleaners get along very well with the pistol since they occupy different parts of the tank.

Even with the par38,

 

Also he's about a 1/3 longer than a hermit think he will tear em up?

He might try. Remember, mantis shrimp are masters of energy conservation. If you're feeding him regularly, he will take the easier meal and not waste his time on the hermit. My little mantis killed one hermit, but it lived for about 5 months. I rescued another hermit after his shell was pretty beat up. I swapped him with another one in my 10 gallon tank.

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Or does any dody have rough dimentions on the par 38?

I'm pretty sure most par38 bulbs are roughly the same dimensions as most outdoor flood light bulbs. You would want some distance between the bulb and the tank unless you are going with mostly sps corals. My boostled par30 on my two gallon tank is bright enough to bleach out palys and zoas at 4" from the water surface.

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Looks good. Your mantis should be plenty happy in that tank.

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Very cool what are you plans for LS?

G. Ternatensis mantis shrimp and mushroom corals.

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Wait till I post pictures of the 5.7 million gallon tank!

Steve, hit me up tomorrow and I'll see what wisdom I can offer up.

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The upper panels obviously hinged in a couple places for access, and they were obviously sumped underneath. Cleaning the acrylic on those things must be a huge pain in the backside.

That stony coral tank must have been four or five hundred gallons. The top and bottom of the tanks were wrapped in stainless steel panels. I can't imagine those tanks costing less than $40,000 each.

Stony coral tank video:

As a few of you know, I just got back from an 8 day trip to Disney World, Epcot Center, et al.

I was happy to find some of the most epic saltwater tanks at Epcot Center. Here are some pictures for you to drool over...

Check out this stony coral tank.

And of course, an epic seahorse tank!

A Nifty Jellyfish tank:

And a pretty nifty soft coral tank:

Stay tuned for videos!

You expected anything less than awesome?

I hooked up the chiller to it's pump and it's all humming away in a bucket right now.

Prior to connecting the chiller, the water was running about 85 degrees with both pumps operating. It dropped the 4.5 gallons down to 80 degrees in about 15 minutes.

That's it for now. I'll do a wet test of the tank in a day or two.

Ok folks, here we go!

For those of you who follow along on the Nano-Reef forums, you may recognize this tank as Micro-Reef's original 25 gallon display tank!

Current equipment includes:

25 gallon TruVu tank, stand and canopy.

1/10 hp Oceanic chiller/heater

Tunze 9002 skimmer

Lighting is yet to be determined

Pre-Buffing.... It's in pretty good shape, not many scratches, won't need much work:

This is the rear chamber. The pump goes down at the bottom on the right side. There is a bulkhead fitting with a nozzle that goes in the hole on the left at the bottom, there are two media trays that fit on those shelves:

This is the chamber for the skimmer. It also holds the pump and the plumbing for the heater/chiller:

About an hour and a half later and 95% of the scratches are gone:

I've got both of the pumps running in a bucket with some water and some vinegar to clean them out. They are working great.

That's it for today. I hosed the tank out thoroughly after buffing it to remove any leftover debris. Tomorrow or Tuesday, I'll fill it with tap water, hook up the pumps and chiller and let it run for a couple days to make sure the temperature is stable and the pumps are working well. During the testing period, I'll polish up the stand, the canopy and start working on moving shelves around in the room where it's going. It will be sharing a room with two African grey parrots.

I'm also going to give this tank it's own GFI electrical circuit since the nearest outlet only has two prongs and is on the same circuit with a bunch of other junk. I don't want to risk overloading it and losing power.

Once everything is ready, I'll set up the tank upstairs, fill it with salt water, substrate and live rock and let it cycle.

I really like Mike, too. My 10 gallon tank was one that he did as a custom size and people liked it so much he added it to their lineup of tanks. I've been really happy with the tank and was stoked to be able to score his old main display tank for the business. I can't wait to get started on the build. I'm going to start out as a MOWLR tank and eventually start adding lots of mushrooms! I'm trying to decide right now if I want to go with dry rock or some fresh aquacultured live rock with lots of critters in it. I'm leaning towards the aquacultured live rock. Having a really good rockscape is going to be important in this one, so dry rock would be easier to work with. Decisions, decisions.

Yep, this tank is going to be a mantis tank.

I'm thinking about making it a low light mushroom garden as far as corals go. I was thinking about another pest tank, but then I've always wanted to do a mushroom-only tank.

It arrived last night!

It's going to be epic!

He sure is. He is a very curious critter. I can tell he is going to be a real charmer once he joins the gang in the parrot room. I'm thinking about making the tank a low light mushroom garden with lots of different mushroom corals.

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Here's another good look at Chuck Norris the sea monster!

I'm super excited tonight because we have a couple friends driving up from San Francisco to visit us, and they're bringing with them a 25 gallon tank with them! I managed to score Micro-Reef.com's original 25 gallon display tank, canopy and stand for an insanely good deal, and I organized transport in the back seat of our friend's car. On top of that, Mike practically gave away a tunze 9002 skimmer and a chiller to boot. This is going to be one amazing mantis tank!

You know what they say... Anything worth doing is worth overdoing. Stay tuned, I'll be starting the build of the ultimate mantis tank early next month!

Speaking of seafoams, that small frag of seafoam palys that Kimberlee gave me a while back have been delightfully invasive in the pest tank. The majanos and aiptasia have been keeping them in their place. They sure look nice in there.

Awesome!

And... I need some of those invasive mushrooms! Hehe.

What if we just add flashing banner ads to everyone signature? I know Thomas would approve.

Hmmm. I've never even noticed it until you mentioned it. I guess it isn't too obtrusive. Plus, it's sponsors that would be selling things that we might want, and not just random ads. Works for me.