Grumble grumble cringe

[Bree42]

I haven't seen the actual critter involved yet, so kinda stuck there.
New live rock with five lacy mushrooms and a large number of stars. More than 5, starting to lean towards 8 at this time. 2 ultra mini blue lynka looking things. 3 of those macro mini type stars and 3 of the black and white brittle stars. All I'd say under 2"
Anyway back on track, this critter started out making a tube, similar to a tube worm, about 1 1/2" long, clear the first day, thought it was a slug and it moved on day 2 to a location where the rock curves down, so all floating foods will fall down that grove and into this tube that it made. On day three it started picking up small broken pieces of shell out of the gravel and attaching it to the outside of the tube. Kinda almost looks like something a trap door spider would do. I see little bursts of debree flying out, like it's cleaning house, but I most definitly can not get a look at what's inside this tube. It's just to quick, even with me standing over the top of the rock.
First thought was spider but that was ruled out, tube worms where ruled out as well.
Confused
Starting to get a sneaky feeling this might be a mantis shrimp????
New rock is about 6" square and have already removed two mithrax crabs.

 

[Bri Guy]

[welcome]

Sorry I can't help with the ID, pics help, try the invertebrates forum...

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=427

Im not sure if mantis create there own tubes though??

 

[chrissreef]

post a picture of the hole/burrow

it doesn't sound like a mantis to me because "On day three it started picking up small broken pieces of shell out of the gravel and attaching it to the outside of the tube"

a mantis will look like a praying matis from the front and a shrimp from behind. do you hear any "popping" sound? maybe a pistol shrimp or another type of shrimp. hmm

 

[Bree42]

Camera really sucks.. I have 2 pictures, one is up real close and of only the critter in question. 2nd is of the section of rock, showing how it's at the base of a hole shaped almost like an upside down volcano. Also it shows on the right of the picture the first casing without any shells on it. Also to add to this, the rock is nowhere near the gravel, this little guy did some traveling to get everything the way he wanted it and it picked up shells, no sand.
http://www.drekster.com/myrescues/strangecreature.htm

 

[Frick-n-Frags]

i had a large worm string tunnels from LR piece to LR piece. I think it had 4 like pincers to rip at things. They told me "Dune" was science fiction. No, I had frickin' dune in my tank. that sucker was ovr a foot long when I finally had enough and split a large piece of LR apart to get it out. gross.

 

[Bree42]

Well I seem to be hearing worm from several people. I'm going to calm down. Somehow I don't picture a worm being as smart as this guy is or as fast. The actual tube is only about 1 1/2" long. The picture is much bigger than it is.