Click Click Click

edizzle

edizzle

Member
I Keep hearing a clicking noise coming from my reef tank. I just started hearing it last night. I have 60lbs of live rock, a bi color Angel, one Damsel (He is to fast to catch to get out of my tank) and mix of mushrooms and polups.
Also some of my hermits look like they have been brutally pulled from there shells and murdered!!! There are bodys and legs scatered about.
What could this noise be!
 
edizzle

edizzle

Member
I have had the tank running about 3 months now. Where did he come from and how can I catch it? Will it harm my rock, coral or fish?
 
bonesnapper

bonesnapper

Member
They can live in rock for a long time without you knowing it. Probably your best bet would be, to buy a pest trap. Yes, they can kill fish, and eat coral. The rock is safe.
 
A

alexmir

Guest
by what you've said im pretty sure its a mantis shrimp. I would get a pest trap like someone suggested and mabye try coming in the room at night when all the lights are off and try and see if you can spot him. Their pretty nasty, go to a search engine and type in mantis shrimp, theres some videos of them destroying crabs
 
bonesnapper

bonesnapper

Member
Yes they can crack glass tanks, not acrylic. I have a pistol shrimp in mine, but I can't find him, but I can hear him.
 
yosemite sam

yosemite sam

Active Member
What does the clicking noise sound like? Pistol shrimp also make a clicking noice (I just found one in my tank). I have heard that generally, mantids make many fast clicks, while pistol shrimp make only two to three clicks at a time.
Mantis shrimp don't eat coral, but they will eat your hermits and snails, and can kill fish. The array of hermit body parts you describe does sound like a mantis, but make sure they aren't just molts. Are the dead hermits in one part of the tank? That may help you track down it's location. As others have suggested, try and hang out by the tank with the lights off, and see if you can pinpoint where the clicks are coming from.
 
A

alexmir

Guest
I love looking at my tank at night with a flashlight, thats when all the little live rock bugs and things come out!!!
BTW i had a few hermits dead in the recent months and thought mabye it was a mantis, until i was watching the tank from a different room, so my fish couldnt see me, and the royal gramma dive bombed a hermit and ripped it to pieces, so it may be a fish doing it....just a thought.
 
dogstar

dogstar

Active Member
Most likely a pistol shrimp but could be a mantis. Look for little spots were the sand has been pushed out from under the rocks. This is what pistols do when they dig and live in the sand.
 
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