could i have a mantis

[renji]

hi guys i hear clicking every day and night in my tank sometimes just 1 or 2 clicks other times machine gun style clicks iv only ever seen a small shrimp that looked like a lobster once and it was only about half an inch long could something that small really make that much noise

nothing in my tank has ever gone missing could it be that i just have a very nice mantis ???

 

[dragonforce]

Machine gun style clicks are typical of mantis IMO. They will fire off multiple shots when breaking small rocks into perfect shapes for doors or boring out a cavity in the live rock for example.

 

[justinl]

did your shrimpy thing look like a mantis or like this (pistol shrimp)...
http://chemistry.csudh.edu/faculty/jim/cozumelaug06small/pistol.jpg

ime you cant really tell apart mantis clicks and pistols by just listening to the frequency of clicks. apparently you can tell them apart if you know what to listen for (volume? timbre... no idea) though.

 

[Pea-brain]

Did it look like a lobster including having claws that look like a lobster? if so you have a pistol. If it look like a lobster w/o claws then it might be a mantis. At 1/2 an inch it won't be able to do much damage. I would feed it every other day with frozens. By the time it gets big enough to kill stuff in your tank it might be placid enough to just prefere frozens. But remember, Almost nothing is guarenteed with a mantis shrimp

 

[Thurge]

Personally I have never heard more "machine gun" style popping than when a frag fell behind the rocks, in front of my Pistol's den and I tried to retreive it. I could just barely touch the thing so it took a good 5 minutes for me to finally retrieve it, and my hand was numb from the cuncussions from the pistol just going nuts.
Since you say you have seen a lobster like shrimp I would be pretty confident in sayin gyou have a pistol shrimp. It is possible to have a model Mantis citizen. There are plenty of mantis that don't get very large and don't leave their cavity very often. I would imagine it might nick the occasional snail or shrimp but your fish would be pretty safe.