Do smashers eat fish or just snails,crabs

[Diesel Man]

I'm wondering if my smasher Spock will eat fish, he hasn't eatin a small blenny but loves snails and green crabs, which are allover around here.
But I want to ad fish. Will a smasher mantis eat fish or do just the spearers? Seems to me a smasher cant spear a fish and a spearer cant smash a snail.
What's the facts? Please....Greg

 

[Guy]

Stomper (my smasher) can easily out-swim a molly. One whack and then he drags it into his hole. I think it might be only a matter of time before yours looks at the blenny as food.

 

[ISFRAEL]

my smasher took out a largish blue chromis with one whack!
he didnt eat it, it was just an annoyance to it!

i keep my mantis alone now, except some corals

 

[Death Shrimp99]

2 Peacock mantis killed 6 Clown Triggers in 1 night! I read that from The Lurkers Guide to Stomatopods.

 

[Isis]

Hello,
I am new on the board and have lots of questions.....
Is my mantis is strange then. It doesn't like fish. It only eats snails and the occassional crab. he loves plankton and shrimp pellets too. Is that normal? I have a smasher one and he is about 1 1/2 inches long now... He lives with two blue damsels and doesn't touch them at all. Will he be alright just eating snails and the otehr things? I treid to feed him krill and he HATES it! blows it out of his hole and will attack it and then push it away like he is scared of it.

 

[fishymissy]

I think mantis are pretty much like fish, you can make generalizations but the odd individual will show up to contradict them. I have a mantis (smasher) in my tank with 2 firefish gobies, 2 scissortail gobies, 1 percula clown, 1 small yellow tang, and he has never attempted to take any of the fish and it will be a year next month. He has wiped out the hermit population though, and also a flame scallop, and a few snails. He leaves the peppermint shrimp alone for some reason:bounce2:

 

[Raszagil]

Smashers can eat fish. When I first got Sashi I misguidedly fed him goldfish. He had no trouble chasing, killing and eating them. Now I do have damsels in with him, along with a large, nasty female maroon clown and an algae blenny, and all of them seem to be working it out fine. Those fish seem to understand the threat he represents, while goldfish, mollies, and other freshwater sacrificial fish will blunder right into him.

Now I do catch Sashi staring at them longingly here and there, but for the most part he leaves them be, with the exception of eating the leftovers when one damselfish starts a murdering spree against the others. The damsels have more to worry about from each other then Sashi!

But you do have to be careful with fish that like to hid in burrows...That's usually an error fish never make again...heh.

Raszagil

 

[Gonodactylus]

Generally we find that gonodactylids (smashers) don't particularly like fish. They certainly can and will kill them, but it is difficult to get them to eat cut up fish. If that is all you give them, they eventually will come around and start to take it.

In fact, animals like Odontodactylus just don't switch foods easily. Sometimes they will go a couple of weeks before they will take a different item. In this respect they remind me of some cats I've known - stubborn!