Well I have what I think is a 1inch g. viridis and im wondering what kind of live food i can feed it. I have a small hermit crab and 2 snails in the small world container with it, the only problem is the snails and crab look like monsters compared to it. I'm thinking ghost shrimp may be the way to go although they are more or less the same size as the mantis. any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.
what live food to feed to a 1 inch mantis?
- Thread starter Simran
- Start date
shrimp would be useless as far as live food go. they need the hard shells of hermits or snails to exercise their rapts. I don like to use oversized hermits... if they're too aggressive, they can injure your mantis. There was one mantis that had its eye taken off once. Have you given nassarius snails a try?
Yeah I'm feeding it Mysis right now and its happily taking them out of my turkey baster. Well the hermit looking like a monster is just a comparison to the mantis, i took the smallest hermit(about the size of my thumb nail) out of my tank and put it in there with the mantis. its just a tiny mantis
gholland
New member
IF your mantis actually takes a whack at relatively soft foods like ghost shrimp and doesn't just "grab and go", then I think ghost shrimp still provide some measure of exercise for mantis appendages. Elvira will swim after a ghost shrimp and stun it with a quick pop before swimming back to her tunnel with it. It's not the repeated whacking that peacocks do on emerald crabs, but it's something. You can actually hear what I expect is the cavitation bubble collapsing (since the ghost shrimp have relatively soft shells) when she does this. I think it's the strike, not the impact, that is important.
But again, it depends on how your particular mantis acts.
Maybe you could try tiny stomatella snails if your mantis will strike at them?
Greg
I second the idea of using Nassarius (sp?) snails to entice the little guy. That is what I did for my mantis when he was still only an inch long. The snail's shell is so thin that it won't take all of your mantis' effort to crack one open. Plus once you add the snails to the tank, they submerge into the sand so your mantis can't really go on a rampage and take them all out in a single sitting. To get the snail back to the top of the sand all you need to do is drop in a sinking pellet (i use cyclopeeze pellets), and they'll pop right up to the surface, making a nice easy meal for your mantis. Having said that, my mantis would sometimes snub the snails in favor of the cyclopeeze pellet, either way, atleast he'd be eating something. Good luck!
Gonodactylus
Premium Member
As I have said many times before, a stomatopod is not just a stomatopod. Different sizes and species have different feeding requirements. I have advised on several occasions that medium to large O. scyllarus be given hard shelled prey to provide exercise for the raptorial appendages. That doesn seem to cut down on appendage loss during molting. However, I don't think this applies to many smaller smashing species, especially animals under 25 mm. Our field data suggest that most species this size or smaller do not specialize on relatively large snails. They eat amphipods, very small newly recruited crabs, isopods, tiny shrimp, etc. Many actually take macro-plankton out of the water column. They may take snails, but usually only when the snails are just recruiting an are only a few millimeters in diameter and thin shelled.
We feed most of our small stomatopods live brine - at times treated with Selcon. Mysids and amphipods are also good.
Roy
We feed most of our small stomatopods live brine - at times treated with Selcon. Mysids and amphipods are also good.
Roy
