Selcon

[austinite79]

I have had my Peacock Mantis for a litttle over a month now. I give her Hikari Massivore pellets(which she likes to smash apart), the occasional crab, and crawfish. What is the need for Selcon? Is it really necessary? Pros and/ or cons please! Thanks in advance- Chris

[Thurge]

Selcon gives the food you are feeding more vitimines. Just like many people take vitimins your mantis will be getting more complete nutrition. Most people tend to feed their mantis frozen foods like Silversides, Krill, Squid, Clams, Scallops, Octopus, etc, then suppliment this with live saltwater crabs and snails on occasion. The selcon helps replenish the vitimins and minerals that are lost or damaged by the freezing process.

Try and avoid feeding your Peacock freshwater flesh. Marine and freshwater creatures have different kinds of fats and lipids and feeding freshwater flesh to your marine creature can lead to a shortened life span due to improper nutrition. Feeding your mantis a crayfish once a year, when the reef club comes over, probably won't be overly detrimential, but feeding it a crayfish every couple of weeks or months, isn't good.

[barnabus's gimp]

if you just feed it live food there is no need for selcon. live food has all the amino acids and fats that are lost after an animals dies. feeding your mantis dead food is sad. I'm lucky enough to live next to a bunch of LFS and I can get any kind of live food I need.

[lionbacker54]

selcon also has fat, which boosts the nutritional uptake.

[barnabus's gimp]

when I say live food I mean marine food. shrimps and whatnot. may not be the best option in most cases but i'm sur eyou can find something. a crab or shrimp cheap.

[justinl]

I generally suggest moving away from pellet type feed. It's more expensive han many frozen feeds and is usually mostly fly ash.

selcon is used to supplement frozen feeds as well as some live foods that otherwise have little nuttritional content rhemselves. Like artemia.

[lionbacker54]

urgh... fly ash?

[Gonodactylus]

I think the suggestion of using Selcon goes back to me. We use it primarily to enrich brine shrimp because they eat some (gut loading) and some of it sticks to their cuticle. It also helps some species maintain color, not surprising given the carotinoids. I've also used it occasionally to help treat large O. scyllarus with shell rot. I honestly don't know if it helped, but it probably didn't hurt. More recently, for small stomatopods we have been using amphipods gutloaded with cyclopseze (never could spell it). This is also an excellent food for juvenile octopus.

Roy

[barnabus's gimp]

I gutload all my shrimp with cyclopeze also, that stuff is awesome, the fish all go nuts for it, even crabs that I haven't seen for weeks will come out of the rock work for the stuff.