Check out my MANTIS SHRIMP!!!

[Frogking]

they kill with no mercy!

[Elliriyanna]

He sounds so awesome If I ever get the nerve to set up a salt water tank I want one

[Frogking]

You can have a small tank my Odontodactylus havanensis only gets about 3inches. Mines is also a smasher so he can sometimes live with a fish or two. Fish must be big and tuff and you cant be mad if your fish ends up as rubble bits on the floor. Smashers like to smash open hard prey like snails and crabs. But I have seen people keep a mantis with some species of fish. The other species of mantis spearers they eat soft prey like small fish and shrimp. They do not have the smashing ability theirs method is to hunt like a cat as they are considered the lions of the mantis family.

[gtr319]

Sweet thang u got there bro!! Hows the set up? I've never set up a salt tank before... is it hard? And what do you need??

[Frogking]

It depends on how crazy you want to go but its not hard. All you need is some sea salt,live sand,live rock to get the tank going. As far as filtration thats wear the tricky part comes into play. The key to a healthy salt water tank is water flow and filtration. Adding things like live sand and live rock give your tank the bacteria thats very important in a new tank. The method behind a protein skimmer is instead of you old fashion fish tank filter. A protein skimmer makes bubbles like 1,000,000 of bubbles that catch little bits of dirt that the naked human eye cant see. (you can see my protein skimmer in the last pictuer and the cut of dirt at top)The bubbles rise to the top of skimmer and pop inside a cup which collects dirt . You also want to have a powerhead which simply blows water and creates a ocean like current which is also important for filtration.
Mantis shrimp need to have good filtration because they are bad eaters( body parts all over the tank and they sometimes burry their food around the tank and dig it up to eat when food is low.

Just to let you know I had freash water tanks all my life and always thought salt water was so hard to do. I tried it and it was just as easy as any pet hobby as long as you do research you will win! ITS NOT HARD