pics:

Tank

The Throne!!!!!

Great Stuff

Rough rockwork done (still needs to be covered in concrete)

awesome ... keep the pictures coming!

I just setup a 10g in my kitchen ... it hasn't gotten much love yet ... water is cold .... very cold ... tank sits on the granite top.

One of these days i'll get around to spending some Q time with that tank.

"Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will sit in a boat all day and drink beer."

hopefully tomorrow we will make a trip down to ace hardware and pick up some quikrete to cover the rocks and pvc for burrows, after that its a waiting game till the cement kures.

Very cool! Dawn

Todays Update:

Took a trip down to home depot, picked up $45 worth of wood/cement for the hood/stand. Got the rocks covered, think it turned out pretty good for my first try...also the pvc makes a U shape that we hope the mantis will live in for easy viewing.


Things to do:
-Buid stand
-Build hood
-wire ccfls
-kure cement
-paint stand/tank
-get mantis


so now its a waiting game since the cement could take a week or up to a month to kure, hopefully it will be short since it's just a thin layer covering the great stuff.


tadahhh!!!

Do you have the concrete curing in water?

"Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will sit in a boat all day and drink beer."

why not just use 4# of lr
or some dry live rock - 1.99 a # if not free
the quick crete looks good but the cycle time just frustrates the shit out of me

yes the cement will kure in water and the DIY rocks was basically a test because my dad was considering a 75 FOWLR with DIY rocks. I'm considering just taking out a 5# piece from my 50 because i'm not sold on the looks yet idk the only reason i kinda want to keep it is because i want to make the three hours i spent picking dried cement out of my arm hair worthwhile...

We decided the DIY stuff just wasnt cutting it so we changed it out with about 5# of LR and 3# of base rock.

pics:




the light is a just a desk lamp with an 8 watt 5100K cf in it until i can get the hood built.

today i made the hood, still needs another coat of paint, and it definitely needs the stand to balance it out, it turned out a little bigger than i had imagined but w/e i'm only 17 with little to no woodworking skills.

any updates?

"Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will sit in a boat all day and drink beer."

things have gotten a little crazy with school starting and my main tank got ich...I finished the bottom stand, its strictly for aesthetics it doesnt even support the tank. Still locating a mantis, thinking about buying a wennerae from tampabaysaltwater, the only inhabitant now was a hitchhiker astrae snail.

FYI
I stopped by the Naples Fish Store on the way home today (old Ocean Environments on Pine Ridge, Naples) and saw an awesome lime green mantis for sale. It was the perfect size for your specimine tank, maybe 1-1/2" long.
Bill

I've got a large probably 3 inch mantis at my store right now. I think he's a peacock, he's black with orange bands down his back and some green in him. I picked him up in miami a few weeks back as a novelty for the store. come check him out!

Yeah Ryan that one at your shop is bad ass. What are you feeding it? I bet it could take down a good size damsel pretty quick!

I know this thread kinda died, because we tore down the tank with school. We kinda rushed and didnt think everything through. But hopefully after christmas I will have the cash, and time to start this again. This time with a false wall, ato, fuge, and a true hood/stand. I've been drawing up down plans for the last month and thought it through this time. Plus my friend who has some decent tools will be helping me build the hood/stand.

lol.Be prepared for Mantis tank 2.0!!!!! coming soon after christmas..

Crude sketch-up teaser:

Looks good - i can't work in sketch-up to save my life.

progress update:

-False wall is built/painted
-tomorrow I will build/stain the stand
-ordering pumps/equipment tonight

O and I forgot to mention We just got back from the keys and I collected a lot of macroalgae. I'm planning on setting up the tank as a FL bay/reef flat biotope with display macro, shrooms, rics, maybe a flower anemone, and a N Wennerae mantis.

We collected halimeda, merman's shaving brush, mermaids wine glass, feather caluerpa, sea lettuce, some kind of purple macro, and an unknown caluerpa

awesome .. can't wait to see it up again. I love little tanks! I've been toying with the idea of setting up another little 10g ... maybe in my den at home.

Havent been on here for a while...anyways, just a little question...

Is that glass (Or acrilic) and if so will it hold up to a mantis if it really wants out?

Just wondering...

The tank is glass, but the bottom will be lined with 1/4" arcylic. An N. Wennerae isn't strong enough to break the glass, but stronger species like peacock mantis would be.

Today the CCFL(cold cathode flourescent) tubes i bought came in, I bought x6 12" ones for the main lighting 4 white 2 blue, and x2 4" white ones for fuge lighting. They are very very bright so hopefully they'll work well. Tomorrow after school i plan on building the stand/hood, then hopefully I can stain/paint/and seal it, install the lights and it will be good to go. =)

love the new set up

lol just when everyone was starting to lose faith...I'm done...well like 95%. I'll take better pictures tomorrow, if anyone has any questions feel free.

Were did you get the cathodes?? Thanks; I might want to try a little project like this also.
-Mike

I bought them from http://www.jab-tech.com/ lol it seemed like a sketchy website, but i payed with paypal and it arrived on time without any problems.

The only other person i've heard of running cold cathodes is an RC mod named Agu he has a 5.5 with the same lighting set up as mine, so far it has worked well for him. HTH

Agu is a great guy - he is up in venice/sarasota area ... last time i visited him he had multiple nano tanks setup! Great guy!

ya he was really helpful when i was planning this and even offered to send me some black acrylic for free.