Small tank coming along

Ever since the death of my mantis shrimp, this 24 gallon cube has been in "rebuild" mode while I decide what I put in it. I have decided to keep it a very slow, tamed and relaxed tank with 3 firefish, snowflake clown, randord's goby, a rare purple banded shrimp and a tiger pistol to remind me of the old mantis with its snaps.

I have also included some inverts, besides the standard snails and hermit crabs for maintenance and cleaning, I added a red tip brittle star, bunch of soft coral, and a pair of feather dusters

Frag time!!

It been a long while since I fragged anything, last week one of the local pet stores in town- Animart in madison, WI was giving away some of their never used fixtures for free. So I took a couple coralife power compact 130w lights to replace what I had on the mantis tank.

For some odd reason the green star polyps just dont do very well in my 92 corner reef while most other sps and lps as well as soft corals are thriving. So before the entire colony comes to non-existence, I decided to frag it and attempt to revive the colony in my mantis tank.

I then also fragged some soft corals, mostly pumping xenia and Kenyan tree, they grow like weed.

Mantis update

My mantis is still alive and punching! In case anyone is wondering...

I am not really sure whatthe growth rate of this creature is. But since I've acquired her (yes, we are sure it is a her), she has only molted once that we know of.

She has been constructing and reconstructing her burrow into a chain of chambers. So we cant exactly be sure whether she's molted deep in her hole. But in order to maintain the water quality, I try my best to feed her minimally- one meal every three days with either a silverside fish or a cooked shrimp.