Anyone feed their mantis variety?

[jedimpt]

I know that most smashers are fed small snails or hermits. I've also seen that frozen shrimp is fed. Does anyone give your mantis a variety by changing up their foods?

I've pretty much stuck to feeding him live shrimp. I've also wanted to feed him some feeder fish, but i've read that it isn't a good idea to feed them goldfish. Are there any saltwater feeder fish? Would minnows be OK?

[instinkt]

I just feed mine some frozen fish. Although there are some snails in the tank with him, but he seems to ignore them.

[dc]

All of the above. Hermits are his last choice! He lives good!!

[natybug]

I offer my O.s. little neck clams ( they live in her tank, so I just dig one up occasionally), hermits, chunks of fish (she likes hake), chunks of shrimp and sometimes she'll take half a cube of thawed Formula One. She usually only eats every other day. She refused scallops repeatedly for some reason, and wouldn't take tuna or swordfish either :confused: .

[KRussell]

I feed my 4.5 in. OS small rock crabs and snails that I collect at my local beach. In addition I feed her shrimp, squid, and cubes of formula 1.

[RogueCorps]

Frozen shrimp, squid, occasional mussels that are oyster hitchhikers at the local Ranch 99 store (her fav)... Ours also refuses scallops, and we need to go to KR's beach to get some live food! The SF bay is unfit! :)

Meals 50% of the time are freeze dried krill though. Our O.S. seems to like to eat these consistently.

-Rogue

[vapester]

..I feed mine live snails, hermits, freshwater and saltwater crabs, freshwater crayfish, fishstore ghostshrimp and baitstore ghostshrimp(the ugly 2" kind), I used to feed it goldfish when it was in a smaller tank, and even a 2" cricket once. I'm overdue to go collect somemore salt-crabs at the coast but he's happy w/ other stuff for now. He loves frozen squid too, that reminds me I gotta buy some of that too. He lives w/ a small clown, 2 striped damsels that were starter fish......wish he'd KO them though, and a shrimpfish which is the newest addition, about 2 weeks ago. Which reminds me, time to feed the slugger!!

[jedimpt]

Wow, I had no idea you could feed them just about anything (except for scallops apparently). Thanks for the info guys, I guess I'm going to try to vary his meals a bit.

[sandman1986]

I feed my mantis a seafood combo from the local store. really likes frozen squid and muscles.

[Kara]

..because I feed my mantis a variety of live and dead things.

I always keep a supply of astrea snails and micro hermits in the tank and a damsel. Sometimes the damsels get eaten and a few snails and hermits will dissappear. I also feed Roy a variety of meaty foods like: prawn, krill, sea scallops (and other saltwater bivalves), octopus, squid, silversides, lobster, flounder, crab.

As for live foods, aside from the damsels, hermits and snails, when I go diving I collect sargassum crabs and sargassum shrimp, mussles and oysters to toss into the mantis tank-of-doom.