My 2.5gl macro / mantis tank

The smallest of my macro scapes. Just a simple tank with Caulerpa mexicana and Botryocladia as the focus, also alittle Chaetomorpha, turf algae, Red Mangrove, Palythoa, Anthelia, 1 Neogonodactylus oerstedii and 1 Astrea.

 

Thanks!

Maintenance is easy, 1gl water change a week and keep the Caulerpa and Anthelia trimmed. Scrape the glass with a razor every few weeks to remove Coraline. The hard part is remembering to top off every day and wipe down the mangrove leaves. No supplements used.

This Stomatapod species is a common Caribbean live rock hitchhiker which stays around 2.5". The LFS got it on a shipment of LR and knew I was into weird stuff, so they gave it to me. They smash tunnels through LR looking for inverts. It's fed once a week, Nassarius and Donax collected from the beach, they will stash food in their caves for later and even decorate the cave openings with the shells of their prey, like some sadistic serial killer. They're common in well lit shallow reefs so are more suitable for our lighting than the large, deeper water species that are so hot on the market, those can develop shell rot under intense lighting.

The Caulerpa, Botryo and mangrove seedling floated onto the beach. All other livestock was taken from my wife's reef tank.

Filtration is a Mini Elite power head. Lighting is a 2 x 13w linear PC landscape light with a 6500k and an actinic. It was broken off on the ground and pretty banged up from a mower so I adopted it, the bulbs were hunted down online to replace the original 2700k's, I added a chord and switch from a scrapped reef light. Substrate is LR rubble and CaribSea Arag-Alive Bimini Pink.

 

The only way they could harm coral is if you prop them up in the rock work, the mantis could knock them over since it likes to redecorate and break rock. They won't eat coral though, so they're really only as dangerous to coral as emerald crabs and Mexican turbos are. Fish may be in danger, any mollusk or arthropod equal in size is definitely the main target for a smasher. Thick shelled snails like Astrea are usually safe with the small species. There are also spearers equipped to spear swimming prey from a sand burrow but those are not commonly found hitchhiking.

I doubt I will ever see another creature with this many legs that seems as smart and inquisitive, it's like they're doing math in their head when they analyze you and their surroundings. If you find one, definitely set something up to keep it, the people who kill them are missing out. Parameters can swing too rapidly in a 2.5gl, 10gl is more reasonable, I just didn't have one on hand and this critter's other option was the chopping block.