Live food Pen?

[Unknownpharoah1]

So our new tank (250 gal) is almost ready to get its first habitants. I would suspect in the next week or so we can add some wildlife. I'd like the first resident to be Peacock Shrimp. From my research it sounds like live food is better and more than likely preferred obviously by the animal. It helps keep those crushers functionable etc. With that said, has anybody setup a separate 5-10 gallon tank to house bulk fiddler crabs or some other type of live food for one of these mantis shrimp species. It's obviously more affordable to by a few dozen at a time and much more convenient than running to the fish shop every other day! Anybody have any experience with this sort of situation? Any advice or pictures would be helpful and appreciated.

 

[Wasabiroot]

Is that your only animal planned? Anything else barring large fish would be likely hunted by these guys. They are fairly smart and quite good at eating things smaller than it.

 

[Unknownpharoah1]

I will get some larger fish as well. The tank is big enough I am hoping that if I can find one in the 2.0 inch range and let him grow up around larger fish he may leave them alone or it will be too much work to get where the fish are hanging out. I would like to keep the shrimp well fed so he's lazy and takes the crabs or snails off the bottom that I drop in the tank as opposed to trying to chase fish around. Seems like a lot of work to me!