those dont really seem all that difficult to me. well, it seems like it will take a lot of planning, and a lot of work, but it seems that it wont be too difficult to achieve.
so, here are the things that make them difficult:
they are cannibalistic. for this reason, they have to be separated. by cannibalistic, i mean they WILL eat each other if given the chance, not that they may.
they need live food: they wont go after anything that isnt moving, they dont eat off of any surfaces, and they have to have small foods. this leaves us with pelagic critters in the plankton. they will only eat something that is swimming through the water column. frozen foods may work sometimes if you can get them to move around in the water as if they are alive.
they have a very demanding diet. in captivity, if you feed them frozen foods and dont enrich them, they will die. even live foods must be enriched. for this reason, whatever food source is cultivated for them has to have the ability of being enriched, which is not as easy with suitable marine options as it is with fresh water critters. unfortunately, however, some of the best phytoplanktons for enriching live foods just so happen to grow in salt water...
they are very sensitive to poor water quality and organic compounds. so, dont even think about waxing the floor around them. they will all die. and you better change their water within a few hours of each feeding...(i do have plans of getting around that one)
that is the basics of why they are difficult. it seems as though the biggest part of the challenge is putting everything together to create a system that takes care of most of it so that it can be done in a hobby setting. thats the part that interests me. someone once said i wouldnt be able to, and i want to find out how to prove him wrong. in the mean time, i hope to learn a thing or two.
![:)](http://forum.nanfa.org/public/style_emoticons/default/icon_smile.gif)
what i have in mind is trays, full of cups with mesh bottoms, made from PVC pipe cut to a few inches long. the cups will have mesh bottoms, will float just an inch or so above the floor of the trays(tested this already), and water will constantly be flowing underneath them from one side of the tray to the other. the tray(which you could call shallow tank) will be connected to a couple such trays, all placed on shelves one above the other. at the bottom will be a refugium slammed full of algae, growing algae just as fast as i can grow it.
i plan on growing several types of live food and enriching them with nannochloropsis algae and one or more of the live phyto products available for reef tanks. hopefully i will be able to enrich them enough to keep the stomatopod larvae alive.
anyone have any thoughts? i have been thinking about this for a couple years now, and it may still be another year or two before i get to start, but hey, the more i think about in the mean time better!