Does your pistol hate macroalgae?

[Betta132]

My tiger pistol shrimp has apparently made it his goal in life to destroy all macroalgae. At one point, I tried to put some feather caulerpa around his burrow. I thought it would be cool to watch him move around in a little jungle. He responded by dragging it down into his burrow a hunk at a time, furiously attacking it until it was in tiny pieces, and dumping the pieces into his underground 'trash can' area. He actually killed most of my feather caulerpa, as he would attack any that was floating around.
He does the same with caulerpa prolifera, as well.
In addition, I had some nice turtle grass pieces floating around and growing just fine- up until about a month ago. He caught all but 2, chopped all the leaves off, and used the stems around his burrow. Thanks to him, all but those 2 pieces died from being pruned down to nothing. Stupid shrimp.
Anybody else had theirs do this? I really can't tell what he has against macroalgae... as far as I can tell, he only chops it up and throws it out, he's showing no interest in eating it. And, of course, the goby isn't eating it either.

 

[gogo7]

is there a pair of gobies in there? the shrimp could be helping with nesting.

 

[Whiterabbitrage]

"My tiger pistol shrimp has apparently made it his goal in life to destroy all macroalgae. "
:uzi:
This is hilarious! Maybe your shrimp has OCD and has to have a very clean and orderly tank.

Mine never bothers about algae, but then I've never tried to grow any around his burrow. Still, I don't think my shrimp would mind.
And I have to ask.... How do you know about your shrimps underground garbage dump? If his trash can is underground how do you see it?
Your shrimp is cool.

 

[Betta132]

There's only one goby, which doesn't seem overly interested in macros. I did see it take a piece down into the burrow once, though... maybe it's helping with the attempts at eradication.

I know about his underground dump because it's under a piece of rock that's up against the glass. I can see directly into it. Well, I used to be able to... he shoved a bunch of random shells and such into there and is apparently no longer using it. I used to see large bristle worms in there, so I guess they were annoying him and he wanted to make them stop nesting in his dump and crawling into his tunnels.

 

[bluecoyote79]

I love looking underneath my tank from the cabinet and seeing all the tunnels my pistol dug. They definitely need a lot of building materials. I ordered several bags of those tiny shells that are too small for all but the tiniest hermits and my shrimp used them all. Maybe yours is trying to build with the algae.

 

[Betta132]

Nope, he always just dumps it back out. He'll shovel it up to the entrance, turn around, and paddle his swimmerets until he's blown it away. Maybe he just really likes shredding the algae?
Mine has a double-handful of those little shells in there with him, plus a bunch of random shells/rocks/etc from things. He's made most of it vanish. He's also raised the level of the sand by an inch and a half with all the sand he digs out from under the rocks. Even if he drives me nuts with his macro-killing, he's awesome.