any one experience this behaviour?

[JmLee]

Well i have a 4 inch female O.S. When i first got her, she gladly ate a few hermit crabs and snails. Lately it seems like she is kinda unintrested in the hermit crabs and snails, for example. She will be poking out of her hole and when she see's a small hermit scurring along she will go after the hermit, pick it up ( and by now the hermit is back into its shell ) then she will examine the hermit, drop it back on the floor and go back to her burrow. Any ideas?. I even tried cutting her feeding back to see if she would get hungry and go for a hermit or snail, but so far all the same hermits and snails that i put in there last thursday are still in there.

 

[JmLee]

any body?

 

[DaddyJax]

Try giving her a little change up like a crayfish or an bad hitchiker crab.

 

[Frostyeel]

How much were you feeding her before and after the cutback? If you really want her to kill something you might need to stop feeding her altogether, but why bother? She might just be a peaceful mantis, I remember one that was so wimpy its owner kept seahorses with the mantis. I think it was on The Lurker's Guide to Stomapods. I wouldn't worry about it, if anything I would take advantage of the situation and buy a goby or blenny to live with her, something that a mantis would usually kill.

 

[Crawling68]

Not all mantis find it necessary to destroy and kill everything. When i put hermit crabs in my Smithii tank, he'll come out and gather them all up to inspect them, the pick pick which one he wants and leaves the rest for later.

 

[JmLee]

its not that i want her to destroy everything, or "Kill" everything, its that i want her to eat the live food that ive purchased for her. she used to eat hermits and snails with no problem, but now it seems she has no intrest in eating live food.

 

[Uriel]

Just leave her with the live food, don't feed her anything else. She will come around, as she gets hungrier...

My G. platysoma is picky, usually not atacking fiddlers (And they escape through the hole for the heater in the back of the Eclipse).

I stopped adding thawed shrimp for a bit, and when i gave him a crab, he went after it with decided enthusiasm and finality.


-Ron

 

[JmLee]

well thanks guys, im just gona wait it out and see what happens.

 

[cuda6872]

I buy a few hermits, a couple snails and sometimes a crab or a shrimp and drop them all in at once. My G. Smithii will flip over & check out the hermits, then drop them & move on to the next one untill he comes to a snail. Or he will go for the crab first. (loves sally lightfoots & red fiddlers) Think of it this way. You like chicken & will eat more than your fill of it. But if you are at a buffet that has chicken, pork, seafood & steak. You might not eat the chicken first.