New Mantis - and high specific gravity

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SkinnyPete

Aquarium Advice Freak
Joined
Feb 4, 2005
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Just got a new peacock mantis shrimp, and during acclimation I checked his water from my lfs and it's testing at a SG of 1.032. That seems a tad bit high, eh? The tank where he is going is 1.023. So, I guess he'll be acclimating for a while.

Would you say 1.032 is a little ridiculously high, especially from a lfs?

- skins
 
Yeah, I hear you. I'm concerned. It was also very expensive. It's a mantis, so pretty hardy. I'm hoping it'll be okay. I'm just going to do a drip I guess and hope for the best. Any other suggestions? What else can I really do?
 
Not much you can do. Sounds like you know what to do with the drip and all. From what I have read, most shrimp don't do too well at ultra high SG, or temps. However, it is a mantis. I had one arrive on 'cured' live rock a couple of years ago. I took a very determined bluelined grouper a month or two to get him, but not before he tore up a bunch of smaller fish and ate them. The only time you saw him was in the middle of the night, and even then he would dart back into the 150 lbs of LR quick. Hope you can see yours, they are very pretty shrimp.

I would be very careful about buying anything else from this LFS. I have heard of dropping SG to 1.20 or less for good reasons, but never of raising it that high for any reason, except for dipping LR during the cleaning process. Sounds like someone is kinda clueless at this place.

I wonder - all these places that 'pre-cure' the LR before they ship it to you, you would think that they would have a bunch of these guys and they would be cheap. I wonder why not?
 
Yeah, I'm a little nervous. It's a very cool looking shrimp and a monster at almost 6". I hope he makes it.

Right now he's in the tank. He's sort of just sitting in a corner...not trying to hide and not moving. I'm sure he's super stressed so I'm just going to hope for the best and see if he's still with us in the morning.

in the meantime here's his first shot...

mantis1.jpg
 
Well, the acclimation does not appear to be successful. I don't know if I just didn't notice yesterday but he's missing a smasher. He appears to be dragging the other smasher. I could be crazy, but I want to say some other appendages seem to be missing too.

Needless to say, he's in pretty bad shape. I acclimated him for 4 hours but at a sg drop of almost .10 in 4 hours, that's still pretty stressful.

I'm pretty upset at the lfs. I just contacted them and was told 'no refunds on saltwater fish'. An angry call to the manager will be made at 4. Funny because in this day and age, I just knew that would be the answer even before I picked up the phone. The conversation should have been "1.032 sg??? Missing smasher???? Sorry, bring him back for a refund."

Poor little guy.

- skins
 
I believe .1 change in SG is 100x of a change to the poor critters.

+++EDIT+++
.01 is 10x
 
You mean you just dropped him in there? You didnt bring him down to your SG level?
 
well i hope he makes it, if they can make it through all the cycleing that they do, then maybe hell be alright........i have my fingers crossed...
 
Marc118 said:
You mean you just dropped him in there? You didnt bring him down to your SG level?
Click to expand...
read those posts again... he said that the store water was at 1.032 and his was at 1.023, and that he is doing a drip acclimation. he never said that he just dropped the mantis in his tank.

~mike
 
Well heposted the mantis in his tank 2 hours after his initial post. That is not long enough of a drip IMO.
 
Marc118 said:
Well heposted the mantis in his tank 2 hours after his initial post. That is not long enough of a drip IMO.
Click to expand...

Yes, I posted hours after I began acclimation. This is my secondary forum. I am a member of a local club and mainly post there, in addition to that mantis forum. I needed as many opinions as I could get, so I posted here as well.

With that said, I'm agreeing with you - even 4 hours isn't enough time. But he went in around midnight. Not much more I could do at that point. I had to get him down to 1.025 that night and unfortunately I do have respossiblities and had to get to bed. And yes, I know I said 1.023 originally. I replaced the tank water with water from my reef so I didn't have to get him to 1.023 - I had plenty of time while I waited for acclimation. I wasn't about to leave an almost 6" mantis in a plastic bag over night. Oh, yeah - did I mention the lfs gave him to me in a plastic bag? Yeah, that's another story. Anyway All I could do is get him down to 1.025 by midnight-ish and hope for the best. It's over now. He's still alive. Hopefully he'll survive and regenerate his appendages. He ate some raw shrimp today - so, I'm hopeful. I wrote a scathing letter to the store and posted a long winded (as usual) message to local reefers warning about the incident. I understand these things can happen, but the store's customer service and attitude was unforgivable in my opinion.
 
im glad hes still alive :). im also glad that you wrote the store, it seems to me that they were mostly responsible....you did what you could, but hes alive and eating and thats what matters.
 
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