What do you like to feed your Mantis Shrimp

[icewater]

Hi, I looked around at this Mantis Shrimp forum and have yet to see if there is an overall thread just for what people give their mantis shrimp to eat. So I decided to start one and have this thread be for what you give your Mantis to just eat and what you put in your tank for the Mantis to have enjoyment in battling for its food.

I will start it off with I usually give my G. Chiragra hermits if I am just trying to get him some food. But if I feel like he deserves to have some fun with getting his food then I would throw in a emerald crab once a week.

I also created this thread to find out what else I can give my Mantis so he could have fun getting his food and I can have fun watching him to get his food.
-Would it be to cruel to put a Pistol Shrimp in his tank?

[Martini5788]

I give mine oysters. And shrimp pellets between meals( because she is obsessed with them, if I pick up the can of them she shoots out
Of her burrow and swims to the front glass and paces until I put a few in) there are 2 crabs in with her right now but she hasn't touched them but did kill the damsel. She hates mysis shrimp. But likes silversides. And occasional squid

[icewater]

That is funny, I can just imagine a mantis pacing back and forth just staring at you until you drop the pellets in. That is also good to know I can throw in shrimp pellets. I wish mine would be interested in silversides, he just takes a few nibbles out one and then throws the silverside away from his cave.

[Martini5788]

I only give her small pieces. Sometimes she gets raw shrimp with shell on. I can go to just about any Stand I want and they give them to me for free. Since I only get like 3 or 4 of them. I live in coastal carolina. Aka shrimp country( bubba gump area). But the shrimp pellets are easily her favorite. I think they are a good supplement, so I don't mind giving them to her. Everybody else hates them which I find amusing. I will throw in 4 or 5 of them and she goes around trying to collect all of them at one time and usually can't but she keeps trying. She grabs one and another falls out. Like a kid trying to collect Easter eggs without a basket. Which I find endlessly entertaining. She refuses to leave even one of them out, and then goes into her pipe and smashes the crap out of them

[icewater]

Oh ya straight shrimp country. Hahah that is funny, I will start trying the shrimp pellets then and entertain myself plus him.

[Martini5788]

Yeah before I moved here I always laughed when I saw Forrest Gump, thinking that it was exaggerated. It is not exaggerated. It is surprisingly accurate. I don't eat seafood, and that makes it extremely difficult because shrimp is added to everything. It's like it's own separate food group around here. Craziness

[JxP]

The only thing mine will eat is Mysis shrimp or table shrimp pieces. I tried giving my little smasher various little crabs/hermit crabs, but they all grew up into large crabs that I have to feed now lol.

Apparently I have the most peaceful mantis species (Falcatus we think).

[icewater]

The only thing mine will eat is Mysis shrimp or table shrimp pieces. I tried giving my little smasher various little crabs/hermit crabs, but they all grew up into large crabs that I have to feed now lol.

Apparently I have the most peaceful mantis species (Falcatus we think).

That is hilarious. The only thing that mine has held off on is CBS and a couple snails that were quite large, all the other crustaceans I have put in the tank he loves to eat.

[JxP]

Oh I forgot to add. I do soak the shrimp in Selcon for the extra vitamins. Not sure if that makes a difference, but the mantis doesn't mind.

[nmotz]

Oh I forgot to add. I do soak the shrimp in Selcon for the extra vitamins. Not sure if that makes a difference, but the mantis doesn't mind.

Dr. Caldwell has recommended the use of Selcon with mantis shrimp so I think this is a good idea. You have to remember that in the wild, mantis shrimp eat live food whole. Nothing freeze dried or just frozen or stored in any way so that it might lose nutrients. I don't believe that a frozen piece of shrimp/squid/whatever is as nutritious as a live specimen so Selcon can help add those vital nutrients. It's really important to vary the diet and always try to give smashers some hard shelled food so they don't get lazy.

I always like to feed mantis shrimp live food, but that can be costly at times. To the OP I'll say that one of the most "entertaining" meals for a mantis is ghost shrimp. It's great fun to watch a mantis chase them around. I have a thread now with a link to some youtube clips of my last O. Scyllarus eating some of them.

[icewater]

Ya I have never given my mantis any other food except live. He wasn't having it with the silverside and that was the closest he has come to eating frozen food. I am going to have to get ghost shrimp now:bigeyes: I want to give him more entertainment.

[AZRippster]

We've had ours since about the size of a half a grain of rice. Being so, we feed it thawed uncooked (rinsed) shrimp, freeze dried krill, silver sides, and once in awhile it will nail a snail. It is now about 1 1/2 inches long.

[Martini5788]

We've had ours since about the size of a half a grain of rice. Being so, we feed it thawed uncooked (rinsed) shrimp, freeze dried krill, silver sides, and once in awhile it will nail a snail. It is now about 1 1/2 inches long.


No way!! Please post a picture. What kind is it? And I'm assuming it came in on liverock? That's like the size of mysis!

[AZRippster]

Yep, came in on a piece of live rock that had a leather coral on it. My wife kept saying, "I think there is something that lives on or in that rock." I could never catch seeing it. Finally one day she said, "I saw it pretty good and it looked like it has googly eyes." When she said that, I knew what it was. We left it alone and in time it grew to where I was getting worried. At the same time we didn't realize leather corals do a molt thing and slime up. Ours did and we got worried. We knew we couldn't keep the mantis so we decided to dip the leather and as a side effect it would eliminate the mantis. Well, we did the dip in Revive and it caused the mantis to come out and what looked like he was dead. We then started feeling bad so we got him in a bowl of fresh water and he moved! Our daughter had a Red Sea Maxx 130D and asked if she could have him. She didn't have but a couple of fish and coral so we figured, "What the heck!" Our daughter is now grown and out of the house but we inherited the Red Sea Maxx and mantis. He is now the only thing in the tank except for a couple of crabs and turbo grazers. A gal from our LFS very familiar with mantis shrimp said it's a peacock, but at this point it hasn't colored up. It has completely hollowed out a rock that is its home. We feed it a couple of times a week by pushing in its door. It takes the food, and them closes the door back up. It's now been 3 1/2" years later and it's approximately 1 3/4" long. We are going to setup a frag tank/system and decommission the Red Sea Maxx. Mantis will be moving to the frag tank. We still haven't gotten any photos of it as it remains very allusive.

The pick is of it back in that bowl we saved him in after dipping the leather coral the Fall of 2011. Sorry it's fuzzy, but I don't have a macro lens and to get it clear I would have needed one.

[Martini5788]

That is so crazy. Where did you get the liverock from?

[AFamilyofDivers]

This is AZRippster's wife. We got the live rock from our LFS. This is the rock he came in on. It had a huge leather coral on it we sold, and the smaller one off the side (all the little polyps) we kept and it is a beautiful size now. I wish I could get a pic of Mantis, he loves to hide out in his rock and he is very spoiled as I feed him regularly. He's probably about 2" long now and a neon greenish color. I've been told he is a Peacock Mantis, but only time will tell as he matures as to what he really is.

[AZRippster]

Those little leather polyps grew big time. We call him "Son of Leather". Here is a shot of our tank. He is on the right side under the torch.

[Martini5788]

Haha well I look forward to any pictures that you can get and post on here! That's pretty awesome though. I decided to get very few pieces of liverock originally and do dry Marco rock so I didn't really get any hitchhikers :/ except a few fireworms.