anyone know what to feed a mantis shrimp??!?

C

coralreefhugr

New member
we got a really pretty navy blue dark green one in liverock from tampa

bay saltwater. Everyone says just drop shrimp or bits of seafood in

from the supermarket and it will eat it up. This does not work. It will

not eat anything but is really healthy and active when it comes out of

its hole. We do not want to feed it live food and will not feed it live

food. Any ideas?? it hasn't eaten in days...




Thanks so much
 
If I've studied enough care guides/faqs/etc. I do know this. It will accept dead food if you starve it long enough. give it 2 weeks. also try sticking the food in its face before taking it away. I would become worried at 3 weeks and dump in some snail and start over again in a while....,
 
ok thanks. We tried giving it dead shrimp with the shell and legs still on it from the store and wiggled it and stuck it in its hole. it would grab on then let go and become uninterested. If any one has any info please share it because we dont know much about this animal. thanks
 
you will need to get a good supply of snails, hermits, small crabs, and maybe even small fish to keep in the tank for him to hunt, after awhile he will eat frozen, frozen alone isnt nutritious enough for them because it lacks the vitamins that the organs and vitamins that the live food does, i feed a mixture of live and frozen to my mantis, when she is picky and wont eat frozen or live i get her to go for a few days before eating and then i feed her either the frozen or live, whichever im trying to get her to eat
 
Mantis need some live snails and/or crabs to keep there raptoral appendages in tip top shape. Dropping a snail in once a week or so is enough to supply this. Frozen foods can consist of Krill, Silversides, Shrimp, Scallops, Crab, Fish, etc. all uncooked naturally.
 
I use a feeding stick to feed my N wennerae (probably the species you got from TBS, that's where I got mine) raw shrimp, scallops, mussels, etc. It does not need live food and it's been in captivity about three years, the average lifespan for this species.

Try smaller amounts and make it work for it's food at the end of a feeding stick. I use a wooden kabob skewer to tease the mantis into attacking. It beats up the stick when getting the food :lol: .
 
odd that a mantis is being picky. anyways, I agree with the variety of frozens, but I would also soak it in selcon once in a while.

I believe in the necessity of occasional live food not for the sake of entertainment, but for the health of the mantis (If you're queasy, you don't need to watch). however, you need to figure out if your mantis is a spearer or a smasher first. Assuming you got the N. wennerae from tampabaysalt, it's a smasher so snails and crab will work fine.

to induce feeding, you need to let your mantis get used to the tank... which just means be patient. the 3 week worry point set by pea-brain is a good one i think. live food might make it a bit more "natural", so it may be a good idea to start with that.
 
yeah, the mantis is a smasher. before we took it out of the main tank it ate almoat all the barnacles and smae gorilla crabs. I really don't want to feed it live food. i would feel sorry for the snail or whatever we would feed it. We have tried giving it shrimp from the store with the armor and legs still on but it won't eat. Do the smasher kind eat shrimp? or should we try feeding it dead scallops and mussles? will post a pic when i get the time. its really cool.

thanks and any more advice would be greatly appreciated!
 
First off, as mentioned above, some live food is essential to keep the animal's dactyls in shape. I understand feeling 'bad' for a snail, but it is part of nature, and an occasional snail would do the trick. You could try small mussels from the market as well. One of mine likes them.

What the above posters haven't mentioned, and what seems obvious is that your mantis might be getting ready to molt. I pretty much have one constantly in molt, having 11 of them in my tanks, so I am very familiar with the behavior that you mentioned. Does the mantis also make threatening gestures at you/ the feeding stick) This would be spreading it's dactyls (Arms) , so that you can see it's meral spot, possibly flaring it's antennal scales out and trying to look tough. They do this to ward off any potential trouble when they are vulnerable (Before their new shells have hardened properly)My peacock also shoot forward a little, trying to spook me, like some schoolyard bully. If this is the case (And you mentioned that it ate a bunch of barnacles and gorilla crabs, thus possible needing to molt), it will probably find a comfortable place, wall itself up and stow away for a week or so.


-Uriel

PS:I have what I believe to be a tiny N wennerae, he is so small that he is living inside a big turbo snail shell.
 
well it didn't make any threatening gestures and rarly comes out of its hole...but yesterday i fed it a tiny piece of shrimp with the armor on and repeatedly kept putting it in its hole... it grabbed it and held it for a while. i thought it was eating it but when it threw it out of the hole 20 minutes later i could see that if it ate anything it wasn't much.

we had a problem though... our heater got up to 80 and we didn't even know it. when we eventually checked the temp we turned the cheap heater off and noticed that the mantis was curled up in a tight ball out in the open. not a good sign would be an understatement. (we had a tiny green mantis and thats what it looked like before it died.) saw it today though and it looked fine. water temp is 75 now... would putting in coldwater clams or muscles (off the coast of california) be ok for the live food part? they sell them live at the market... thanks for the feedback
 
You should be OK with those as live food sources. Just keep in mind that if you put a bunch in at one time for the mantis to snack on at leaisure, they will probably die becaue of the tempreture of the tank. Just pick one or two up at a time and enjoy the odd look you get from the person behind the counter.
 
Roy mentioned somewhere that feeding them bivalves (clams, mussels, that kinda thing) isn't a stellar idea. The biggest problem is putting a lot in at once. A mantis as a predator will learn that they pop up frequently and will take to just smashing them all and only picking out the good parts. The rest of the meat decomposes and causes a whack load of water problems. So in other words, no more than like one clam at a time.
Personally If i were to throw a bivalve in, I would make sure it's smallish and that the mantis were hungry (starved for two days maybe?). If you're starving him you may want to move out other meaty prey like hermits/snails/urchins... or just keep it simple and not feed bivalves. I think there's plenty of other variety of live feeds available that are cheap and much less trouble.
Can you find some small shore crabs instead? I think that would be your best bet.
 
yeah but we want to feed it stuff thats already going to die, like clams from the store. I do not want to feed a cute poor little innocent crab to a mantis shrimp. To tell you the truth we didn't want it in the first place. It came on the rock and nobody wanted it, and we didn't want it to die so we bought heater, 10 ga,l and rock. We like it alot and want it to live, but we just can't live with putting in a poor crab. I know we are going to have to feed it live food eventually, but right now we just can't do it. lol If we got like a really small clam and put it in, do you guys think it would eat it? It hasn't eaten for a week almost, maybe more. How long do you think the clam will last before the high temp kills it? Long enough for the mantis to break it open and maybe eat it? I know feeding it clams isnt the smartist option but I really couldn't kill a crab. Thank you for your help
 
I would suggest that you try to find this mantis a suitable home. I can understand your moral dilemma with sacrificing animals,but that kind of thinking is not in the best interest of the animal depending upon you for its survival, the mantis. If you are not able or willing to give it what it needs, please try to find someone who will give it proper care.
 
If the clams are small enough it could do. Just get it started on the frozens just to get it eating initially. If the clams are too big, you could just cut it up and feed small bits at a time, but that wouldn't help a lot because there wouldnt be a shell to excercise on anyways.

put it this way: it's life. In a food chain, things eat other things which are then in turn eaten. So how do we class what is "okay" to be sacraficed as food? Is a hermit by any degree more important than a clam for example just because it is motile and "cute"? Nature is beautiful but has no morals. All organisms big, small, mobile, or sessile are part of an intricate web of interactions that we barely comprehend and cannot control. No matter how we try there is no possible way to recreate a full ecosystem in a tank. That said, we do try. We try to imitate nature by providing what nature provides. in this case food. So the question is this: what is ethical? Is it ethical on the part of mr. hermit to let him live but let the mantis become lazy and unhealthy? or is it more ethical to kill hermits for the sake of a pet predator? There is, of course no right answer, just personal preferences. I can understand where you're coming from, but ultimately, personal preferences has nothing to do with it.
 
So as the dactyls are being used on something hard it's okay. It's just that mantises sometimes stop redecorating. that's when shells should be provided to be hit.
 
i kept a peacock mantis about 2yrs ago and he loved cockle in the shell you can get it in bags frozen it only ate about 2 or 3 a day but they love em
 
ms. k,
We have tried and tried and tried to find a "suitable home" for this mantis, believe me! We did not want it in the first place but after every lfs we went to didn't want a mantis, and asking around, NOBODY WANTED IT! So now we are stuck with it and are trying are best to have it survive. We like them but we know that we aren't the best people to have a mantis shrimp. We would give it away if we could but we can't (we know people on RC would want want but don't want to ship)
 
Yesterday i bought a live clam and a live muscle and put it in there. They were way to big for it but thats the smallest the store had. The muscle died but not after several hours. The clam still hasn't died in the tropical temp of the aquarium. The mantis shrimp was uninterested and even after the muscle was open it totally ignored it. We are going to try to buy live food like shrimp.

Dr Roy recommends breaking the shell of a large bivalve for a smaller mantis before putting it in the tank for them as food
Click to expand...

I don't see how some people can get their mantis to eat frozen cockle or breaking a shell of a bivalve. We tried feeding it scallops, clams, muscles, and shrimp with the armor still on. It won't eat anything.
 
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