Since I cant use the search button for some reason, how much should a 4 inch peacock mantis be eating? is try to feed him a snail or krill every 2 days but ive never heard about their eating behaviors in captivity and this size, in the wild would he be eating every day? and is there a way to see how much food to give for the size of shrimp thanks
Feeding for a 4" Peacock Mantis
- Thread starter Wocka
- Start date
Gonodactylus
Premium Member
In the field O.s feed daily. In fact, they will often make several foraging excursions away from their burrows. Most prey items are small.
To judge how much to feed a stomatopod, look at its stomach. An hour or two after eating ist fill, the stomach contents will turn dard and are visible through the carapace as a dark spot. (This is harder to see in a male than in a juvenile or female.) The stomach of a 4 inch O.s is a little more than a cm long and will hold a bit more than a gram of food. In other words, they can eat a cube of food about 1 - 1.5 cm on a side in one sitting. Because the stomach clears in a few hours, they in theory could eat two or three times this amount in a day, but they usually don't.
Roy
To judge how much to feed a stomatopod, look at its stomach. An hour or two after eating ist fill, the stomach contents will turn dard and are visible through the carapace as a dark spot. (This is harder to see in a male than in a juvenile or female.) The stomach of a 4 inch O.s is a little more than a cm long and will hold a bit more than a gram of food. In other words, they can eat a cube of food about 1 - 1.5 cm on a side in one sitting. Because the stomach clears in a few hours, they in theory could eat two or three times this amount in a day, but they usually don't.
Roy
thanks for the information, so feeding him every day around that amount of food would be good.. i will start doing that now that i kno. a snail a day is around that size, ill try to go to the ocean and collect a few snails + crabs, i need to set up a tank to house them in tho.. hrm gotta love the mantis shrimp :rollface:
ShiftNation
New member
Gotta love that you live in florida and dont have to pay for snails and crabs .... lol .
Frostyeel
New member
You could just keep the snails in your mantis tank and not only would they clean it up a little but whenever your mantis was hungry he could just eat one. I think he knows when he is hungry better than you do. Keeping them in a seperate tank works fine too, but it just seems a little bit more work, and I think leaving extra crabs with your mantis would not be a good idea so you would need an extra tank for them anyway.
Frostyeel
New member
You could just keep the snails in your mantis tank and not only would they clean it up a little but whenever your mantis was hungry he could just eat one. I think he knows when he is hungry better than you do. Keeping them in a seperate tank works fine too, but it just seems a little bit more work, and I think leaving extra crabs with your mantis might not be a good idea so you would need an extra tank for them anyway.
