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

Post that you have a mantis for sale in the classifieds of various forums. Mantis lovers are more common than you might think. Some will even be glad to pay shipping as well.

sometimes it takes a while for a mantis to feel comfortable and start taking food. They can last a while without food. Has it made itself a decent burrow? a burrow helps immensely to make it comfortable. Aggressive tankmates don't help either. Wiggle the food on a stick close to him but don't stick it in the burrow.
 
Well, if you are still interested in giving it up, I may be interested :) The only ones my local store can get in are the peacocks, which I'm not too fond of. I've been looking for a smaller one for a while. Definately would pay shipping if we can find a good place to ship with for a decent price :) Let me know.

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)
Click to expand...

edit: tried to pm first, but it would not let me. please don't jump on me for not?
 
Well its not the price of shipping that matters, we just don't want to put further stress on the animal, and wouldn't want to deal with all the packaging and stuff. But we will def. try to find a home for it. For a burrow it has a rock with lots of holes in it. It has been acting weird lately though. When it comes out it on its side or back partly curled. When it is in the rock it makes almost constant clicking noises. Anyone know what it is doing? The rock has nothing on it. It is not live, no barnicles, clams, anything for it to break open. Is it doing this to the rock? It has no aggressive tank mates, its in an aquarium by its self. We tried wiggling food in front of the hole in the rock. If we are lucky (rarely) it grabs it, but it doesn't eat it. It brings it in its hole and ten mins. later throws it out again. Should we put some live whelks in since it wont eat already dead food or clams?
 
Im not sure about the behaviour out in the open. I do remember one story that had a mantis on its back a lot but it ended up being okay in the end.

The whacking away at the rock is perfectly normal. The majority of smashers make a burrow in the rock. If they are unhappy with it they redecorate and pull in shells/rubble and hit the walls to make the burrow bigger. Some have quiet phases when they're happy with their home, and renovation phases where they go insane on their burrows and basically aquascape your tank for you. How often it redecorates is dependent on the individual.

Whelks are temperate right? If you do, make sure you get them out fast when they die. I would recommend tropical live food in a tropical tank.
 
We just started with a reef tank and got our LR over a week ago. We began hearing the snapping and figured out that we had something hiding inside. Finally I saw the strangest but cute face staring out of a whole at me one day. We researched and found that it was probably a Mantis and that we should get rid of him. One time while he was staring out a whole just sitting there I heard more snapping. Hmmm.... I thought could there be 2 of them? He moves so quickly from whole to whole it was hard to tell. My husband was determined to get him out of the tank so he tried the various dips to get him out. We had a few crabs come out and a small ball of fluffy pink eggs. We ended up just putting the rock back in and then all of a sudden the little guy came out. He picked up a little branch from a plant and carried it around in front of him as if he was trying to hide. He would peek around and watch my every move. I found this site and started reading all about him and talked my hubby into giving this little guy a chance. What we may have here now is a little Mantis family. The little ball of eggs look just like the pic I saw on a site. Since the dip and return (I feel so guilty) he has been busy working so hard arranging a "fort" underneath the rock and decorating it with shells and small rocks. We still have lots of crabs and snails in the tank but I wanted to try and ask for forgiveness so we offered him some guilt food yesterday and skewered a piece of fresh fish from our own food. We placed it just outside his "fort" and left him alone. He is not used to our glaring eyes watching him. From a distance, we saw him come out and look around then gently take the food and carry it under the rock. He spent about a 20 minutes just sitting there eating and holding it then took it up into the rock. I could see some little pieces coming out of other wholes later. (Are they messy eaters?) He popped out of a whole in the evening and we had a stare down for a bit, as if to say, thank you but I won't forget. So now we are working toward a smaller tank for the Mantis family to live in. Any ideas on the egg laying, feeding and care for breeding ones?
 
Skipper, as you have "very little" experience in saltwater, I hate to say it, but don't even bother trying to breed mantises. Dr Roy Caldwell (he's around here) even has some difficulty... and that says something. You can search around for what he did to raise them but it is very labour intensive and expensive I'd imagine. Much harder than fish larvae. Also keeping two mantises in one tank doesn't work very often (depending on species... get some pics and we can give you an ID) as they will harass and likely eventually kill off the other or eachother.

If the tank is already a reef tank, Id suggest getting the mantis out asap as they like to aquascape.

Some mantises are messy although some are more than others. A skimmer would not be a bad idea.
 
Justinl, I got some info from Dr. Roy Caldwell and Pea-brain on another thread "He won't stop" and they gave me insight to what happens and what to do. It looks like raising the step-children will be out of the question unless hubby wants to give it a try! It appears that we have a N. Wennerae. Haven't seen them all day but they have been busy doing demo in the rock. They put up little shells in a lot of the holes, especially the ones facing up towards the light. When they come out again I will try and get a picture. They are very shy and don't venture out into the open. The tank is my husbands and I have laid claim to the Mantis. ("Oh don't hurt him...he is so cute!") He has it all set up with the skimmer and the base tank underneath. (Give me time and I will learn the proper terms for everything :) So hubby is thinking about a Nano tank for the Mantis. We have only gotten our first shipment of LR so far and will get the rest this weekend. I am getting a crash course here and I am enjoying it! I have a lot to learn Just hope it turns out okay.
 
Picture of my Mantis

Picture of my Mantis

I tried for some good shots of him today. Blurry but you can see him. He has been busy cracking the rock. I even got to watch him in action. I put the pic in my gallery. Can you tell for sure what kind he is?:D
 
It sounds like your mantis is about to molt. Some species will go into "home improvement" mode just before closing up the burrow for molting. They also won't eat. My peacock would literally throw the food back at me.

FWIW, I have heard of one person ordering a bunch of empty snail shells off e-bay. He would stuff one with shrimp from the grocery store and feed it to his mantis. That way the mantis could beat it open.

You could also try Gamma foods frozen whole cockel (in shell) and whole shrimp as well as whole krill.
 
frozen fresh sea food is the best...soak it in vitachem, or selcon for enrichment

if he doesnt want frozen he will let you know he is hungry and believe me i wouldnt try mantis breeding unless you want to setup about 100-200 2.5G tanks to raise the babies, these are no where near fish babies and are extremely difficult to raise, if you want to try breeding try something easy like clownfish and work your way up from there
 
We got the feeding down pretty good. He likes chunk seafood better than the thawed frozen cubes. He took both but tossed out the cube stuff. Each time we are moving the skewer out a little farther from his rock so that we can get a better look at him. (I will try the shell feeding next week.) We also picked up the selcon for him. While hubby was moving a small cluster of growing coral, I was able to video him. He did not like the tongs near his rock...snap!
He is still in demo mode and it's amazing to watch him snap the rock. He is such a clean freak and seems to sort the items at the base fort wall (shells on the left, square rocks in another section and smaller round ones out front.)
Question: Do you ever need to try and replace his rock if he totally destroys it? Will they move into another one at some point?
I think breeding is out of the question! We should be getting our next shipment of LR in the next week or so, I am hoping that we don't end up with another hitchhiker. Don't want to have squabbles.
 
well depending on how big the tank is i doubt there will be squabbles if another arrives in that rock, the one already picked his territory and im sure the other one will pick his, just keep them both fed if it happens and they will be fine, my peacock doesnt burrow into rocks but im sure the mantis will leave his rock if he feels its not safe or not large enough
 
We have a 30g for the reef. So far he is behaving himself and not killing anything (that we know of). We have a lot of crabs, snails and limpets on his rock and they seem okay. If need be we will get a 12g or 24g for him or if we get another hitchhiker and they don't get along. (My hubby said that he could make one any size. (He is drooling over the "Large Reef Acquarium" pics. I think he wants to leave this one to me and go massive! Uh oh! I better change my password so he can't see anything!!!)
 
bad news... our mantis shrimp died several days ago. :( I don't know why it died. It didn't die of starvation because it could have eaten. All i know is that when it is out in the open, doesn't bother to hide, and is on its back, its a bad sign. Thats what it looked like before it died, and same withe the other one that came from tbs live rock. They are so cute and we really wanted it to live. :(
 
In case anyone is reading this thread and is still wondering how to get the mantis out of their main tank (probably not but just in case), I think the best way is to take the whole rock out, find out what hole its in and squirt freshwater in that hole. When you squirt the freshwater try to squirt it in the side of the hole that its eyes arent so you don't blind it. Then quickly dip half the rock in saltwater (with one end of the hole its in on that half) and it should jump into the saltwater. Thats what we did and it worked. We tried all the traps and everything, and nothing worked.

SKIPPER2 ~ GOOD LUCK! hope you will have better luck than we did.
 
Hubby got his 2nd batch of LR last night and was up till 3 am setting it all up. We decided to move our Mantis to a 29g Biocube. He was out and about decorating. We now have to figure out how to get rid of the Gorilla crabs hiding in his rock. Read that they may kill my little guy. Got a great video of him and it's now on my Ipod! We are hearing snapping from the new LR...not as loud as the Mantis, perhaps a smaller one or maybe the Shrimp that came with the LR.

Coralreefhugr - Sorry to hear about your Mantis.
 
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