pistol shrimp...awesome critter...

hello all.

so i have a pistol shrimp that hangs with my goby, they were bought together and added at the same time. they paired up shortly afterwards and now seem to happily live in the depth of my sand bed.

iv lost a few corals in the past and have their dry skeleton around my living room as "ornament"...a little gory i guess...

so what i do now is that i break up the skeleton and toss it in my tank, i do this this to supply my shrimp with building blocks and i believe it works. a couple days later the dead acro branches are gone.

iv had the chance to see a tunnel face on and its pretty crazy how he literally builds walls around the sand inside the tunnel itself.

i was wondering if anyone else did this too, also i occasionally hear a loud "clak"sound once in a while. back in the days i use to freak out that it was my brace or aquarium glass cracking but is it possible the sound actually comes from the shrimp?

 

Mine makes the same loud click as well.

 

I've had a Tiger Pistol and a Yellow Watchmen Goby pair for almost 2 years now. They are some of my favorite inhabitants to watch. In the time I've had them, the have both grown petty big - about 4-5 inches long each.

I do the same and provide him some building materials. I also setup the sand bed with a mix of crushed coral, medium course sand and a fine sand.

The shrimp has some pretty good building skills. In my old 50 gallon, he literally took over the entire length the tank. He had burrows and tunnels from one end to the other.

In my new 125 tank, we setup the rock work to try and segregate him to one side - so far so good.

 

My tiger shrimp wouldnt let my Randalls goby in his tunnel, kept kicking him out. Shrimp about 2.5", goby 1.5"

Might put a yellow watchman in to see if they team up.

 

Love my pistol shrimp! Yes, the loud noise is the pistol. It's very cool.

 

Got lucky with construction.


The tunnel leans on the glass allowing me to see inside.



The culprit

 

that's pretty cool.

The best I've seen from my pistol shrimp is a large open trench along the glass - he keeps the rest of it a secret from me

 

That is an awesome picture! I'm thinking about adding one to my tank