Okay here is the update!!!!
Against my better judgement I brought home a very small strawberry dottyback that my LFS said would get along with my very small six line wrasse.
Well, after a quick acclimation they went at it with the sixline winning the fight; next thing you know the dottyback is in a corner all scared.
I wake up in the morning to see him still in the corner but scared. Then I go to work and come home to see him sticking out of the live rock that I suspected the mantis lived in.
I figure, cool he has found a home that he can hide in and will no longer be bothered by the wrasse. I take a closer look and notice that he looks a little pale but is still moving back and forth.
I then say wait a minute he's dead but why is he still moving. I reach in with my hand and tug very lightly on him and something literally tugs back.
Okay so I now know where Mr. Mantis is at. I take my hand out of the tank and go to the kitchen to pull out the rock and also make up a small cup of tank water to catch the mantis.
I go back to the tank and shut off the power and dislodge my clam and another coral that I had clued to the rock. I'm a little upset because the clam had mounted on to the rock by the base and it's bad to move them at this point.
But hey, I need to get this mantis out of the tank as I know he will grow and kill everything in his or her site.
So I tug one last time on the dead dottyback to make sure he's still there and sure enough he tugs back.
So out comes the premium live rock and I go to the kitchen and run some tap water in the holes of the live rock to see if he will come jumping out, nope.
So then I submerge the rock completely into tap water for about 4-5 minutes with zero results again. At this point I don't care if he dies or lives I want him out.
So I expose the entire rock to hot tap water and still he doesn't come out. Okay, so I'll go outside and see if I can shake the rock really hard and he'll come out since he's proberly dazzled, nope.
Then as I shake harder the rock slips out of my hand and smashes on the concrete, bam out comes the mantis and the premium rock is destroyed; he's dead and I'm upset that I lost both him and the rock.
He was no bigger than my fingernail but he had taken out my dottyback and it was only borrowed time that he would kill all others in his domain.
I've had problems with evil fish eating crabs in the past but never a mantis, if I would have known that he was in the rock I would have never placed a cleaning crew and would have set it up as a mantis tank.
But the lesson learned is you take chances in reefing and just when you think it's safe to enter the water out comes a mantis; what can you do?
MG
P.S
Can you imagine if I would have decided to place this premium piece of live rock into my 72 gallon bowfront?
...... :lol: :lol:...