Mantis or Pistol

[lj_smith]

How can you tell if you've got either a mantis or pistol shrimp hiding in the rocks? Every night i here a clicking noise in my tank as if some one was tapping a coin on the glass. I've asked my LFS and they said it could be either, is there any way of finding out and if dangerous, a way of capturing it, i've lost 4 healthy green chromis although i do have a green brittle star (could be him!) :?:

 

[The Apprentice]

How can you tell if you've got either a mantis or pistol

Hi LJ and welcome to Reef Frontiers I don't know about Mantis Shrimps but I do have 3 different types of Pistol shrimps in my Tanks At Night If I want to see them I take a Flash light with a Blue lens cover and I shine it around their caves and it doesn't bother them and you should be able to find it That way. If its a Pistol If its a Mantis I just don't know. As for my Pistol shrimps usually they snap their claws when my hermits, or snails get to close to them some times if my Tangs get to close ( Feeding time for my shrimp they will snap ) But my fish seem to have no fear of them and they do seem to leave my fish alone. Good luck I hope you fine out what you have....Jeff

How can you tell if you've got either a mantis or pistol shrimp hiding in the rocks? Every night i here a clicking noise in my tank as if some one was tapping a coin on the glass. I've asked my LFS and they said it could be either, is there any way of finding out and if dangerous, a way of capturing it, i've lost 4 healthy green chromis although i do have a green brittle star (could be him!) :?:

 

[The Apprentice]

Pistol Links

Lj here is a link to a thread that Jay started earlier it hase some good pictures of some Pistol shrimps I hope this might help you out a little HTH....Jeff

http://www.reeffrontiers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11770

 

[lj_smith]

I've tried looking with a flash light on quite a few occasions but never found anything, I am ok with the noise it makes but if it's a mantis then I might be a little worried about my fish and cleaner + fire shrimps, thanks for the advise Apprentice I,ll keep looking out for it

 

[The Apprentice]

Ok LJ lets get you hunting!

OK LJ You may want to try this If you feed your fish any Mysis shrimp or any other frozen type of food like Prime reef you can take a little and put it on the end of some tongs or any rod like a hanger or??? Move this food around your rock work wear you may suspect this little guy to be hiding it may come out to take the food I am sure your fish will be trying to take the food as well thats OK. If its a pistol they tend to stay away from the fish but they will give off a warning snap saying the fish is to close. Another question do you hear it when the tank lights are on at all?

I've tried looking with a flash light on quite a few occasions but never found anything, I am ok with the noise it makes but if it's a mantis then I might be a little worried about my fish and cleaner + fire shrimps, thanks for the advise Apprentice I,ll keep looking out for it

 

[NaH2O]

Do you target feed the green brittle star? Do you notice a pattern with the clicking? Such as successive clicks in a row, or only one click at a time? Do you have the sound isolated to a specific rock?

The Apprentice...Happy Belated Birthday!

 

[lj_smith]

I sometimes hear the noise in the day but not very often.
I don't target feed the brittle star as he always comes out to feed when i feed the fish and he usually catches some food.
Sometimes it's just one click sometimes it's several in a row, i thought it was a pump or something at first so i turned all pumps off one night and still heard the noises. It's hard to isolate a certain rock as there are alot of rocks in the center of the tank where the noise is coming from, probably at the back knowing my luck, i can see down the back partly though so i'll try a bit of frozen food on a stick and see if i can tempt him out.

Luke

 

[wrightme43]

Or a cube of frozen brine wrapped in pantyhose stuffed in a 16 oz plastic soda bottle. Put it in a night and see what crawls in.

 

[lj_smith]

ok i've tried the mysis on a stick and also a bottle with food in it and no luck so far, so now i've taken to dismantling my rocks and re-built it with open caves and a bit more access inside the rocks, hopefully now i'll be able to see something at night ( once all the cloud has settled down), at least the fish like it better, swimming in and out of the caves and arches , i'll try putting the bottle inside cave bits see if something crawls in now :?: , cheers for the help so far guys

 

[reefaddict]

it took me a year to find my pistol shrimp. it was so loud that i was sure it was a mantis but i finally found it by shining a flashlight from under the tank. it had created a cave under some lr and made tunnels similar to what an ant farm looks like on the bottom of the tank. every time i hear the clicks i go under the tank and i can usually find the shrimp eating a live mysis.

 

[Jason Cody]

I had two mantis shrimp in my aquarium on two different occasions. I could hear the clicks at night so I started looking closer at my rock and actually found both of them during the day. All I could see were their eyes independantly looking all around. I wasn't sure what it was until I looked at some pictures of them. The way I got them out was by remembering the holes in the rock that I saw them in and I pulled that rock out, held it over a bucket and shot fresh water into the hole with a syringe. They immediately shot out of the holes and right into the bucket. They don't like that fresh water! I then quickly placed the rock back in the aquarium and that was the end of them. Good luck.

 

[lj_smith]

Are they really that dangerous, i haven't lost any more fish since the green chromis disappeared, i don't really mind the clicking noise so long as my fish are safe

 

[Jason Cody]

The bigger they get the more they'll eat. Fishermen that catch them in their nets call them thumb splitters for good reason. I think they serve them like lobster in Australia and call them "bugs". Supposed to be very tasty! But that's how big they can get.

 

[Curtswearing]

There are a lot of different species of mantis worldwide. One of the most common hitchhikers is Neogonodactylus wennerae from aquacultured Florida live rock. This particular species stays quite small even when fully grown. In fact, most species that people get as hitchhikers are the smaller species.

There are a couple species that can get as big as a lobster but I've never heard of them being a hitchhiker.

Here is a list of mantis that people typically keep in the hobby.
Dr. Roy's list of Stomatopods

Most hitchhiking mantis are not as dangerous as they are made out to be. Most don't go after fish, they can't break your aquarium, and they won't split your thumb. More people lose fish to Eunicidae worms than they do to mantis and because eunicid's don't make noise, most people never even know when they have one.

 

[lj_smith]

Although i can't seem to catch anything yet, is there anyway of of telling if it's a mantis or pistol, as i gather, pistols aren't dangerous. Thanks again for all the help and suggestions

 

[cheeks69]

What's the difference between mantis shrimps and pistol shrimps?


* At the very basic level, the two are very different critters, with pistol shrimps belonging to a completely different group of organisms which include lobsters and crabs, while mantis shrimps make up the only living order in a superorder called the hoplocarida. You can tell both apart very quickly by the ff:
* Pistol shrimps have two relatively large claws (one significantly larger than the other) that it holds extended in front of it, while mantis shrimps hold their enlarged forelimbs very close to their bodies.
* The carapace of a pistols is relatively "long" (ie. covers the head and thoracic segments), whereas in mantises the carapace is extremely short, which makes them look more "wormlike" because of the exposed abdomen and some thoracic segments. This makes the mantises very flexible, and they like rolling around a lot inside their burrows or cavities.
* Pistols seem to have a very normal looking shrimplike "rostrum" (I don't own a pistol, so I'm basing this on pics), which is a sharplike extension jutting outwards from their head, while mantis shrimps do not clearly show this structure.
* The eyes of pistols are recessed, whereas mantises have extraordinarily stalked and eminently moveable eyes.
* Mantis shrimps have a pair of "winglike" antennal scales along the sides of their head, which you can very clearly see if you look at them face to face.
* Pistol shrimps make those clicking noises by using one of their specially modified claws. Based from different sources, these are either used in mating, hunting (by stunning small prey), and in fighting with other pistol shrimps. Mantises cannot make clicking noises per se.... instead, any clicking noises from a mantis shrimp are due to using its forelimbs to hit something else, either inanimate objects or (more likely) hardshelled prey such as snails or hermit crabs.
* Whether or not pistols are deadly to other inhabitants of the aquarium seems to be an open debate. Some have said they do eat others, while I've read in some reference books that they feed on already dead stuff. I suppose it's really a combination of both, with the shrimp feeding on much smaller prey when the opportunity arises. The mantis is deadly to others (especially when it's pretty hungry), although one mantis that I have has (so far) left other inhabitants alone when kept amply fed. I've seen pics of gobies and pistols cooperating, while I'm sure the mantis would rather eat the fish than live with it.

http://www.blueboard.com/mantis/pest/tell.htm

 

[lj_smith]

Is there any way of telling from the noises they make? as i haven't been lucky enough to find it yet

 

[John Henry]

Is there any way of telling from the noises they make? as i haven't been lucky enough to find it yet

Wow, that sounds like a rather tall order!:shock:

I haven't heard of any ways to tell them apart by sound alone....but I've heard blind people have especially acute hearing; ya know any blind reefers?

...sorry, stupid question.

Actually, I'm in the same boat as you. I hear the clicks but have never seen the little guy. But I'm not too worried about it and you probably don't need to be either, until your snails and shrimp start getting killed.

Actually, I'm kind of hoping this guy will kill that nasty crab I have but can't catch!

Good Luck! and let us know if you see him,
Jh

 

[John Henry]

Just found this from the page on Robert's post above,


"I have read somewheres that one way to tell from the clicking noises is that pistol shrimps tend to snap in ones and twos, whereas mantis shrimps make rapid multiple hits.
The point here is that clicking noises don't prove anything. However, in conjunction with the continued loss of inhabitants, and the lack of any other viable culprit, you can probably assume that you do have a mantis problem."

 

[NaH2O]

I've only heard about the "ones and twos" vs. "multiple clicks" when trying to decide what you have. I'm not sure how accurate it is, but worth a listen. The red lens over the flashlight won't work too well on a mantis (not sure if it was mentioned yet), so even if you stayed up all night to watch, you may not see the culprit.