I have a bullseye pistol that came in as a hitchhiker. He's snapping several times per hour. He's big enough now where he'll come out more often which my kids love.
I have a handful in my 180g reef. I hear them on rare occasions during the day and somewhat more often at lights out and dawn, like 2-5 snaps in a minute or two and then quiet for 5 to 10 minutes. But it's very erratic. For those who have never heard one in an aquarium, image standing at the front of the tank and hearing somebody doing a good, loud snap of their fingers! And the tiny shrimp that makes that sound is under 2 feet of water and behind a wall of glass!
The snap is harmless to the tank and any critter of any size bigger than a copepod. The snap creates a small shock wave in the water and it 'stuns' small copepods and bacteria in the water which the shrimp can collect and eat. The snap is it's way of hunting (thus it's a 'pistol' shrimp). Google pistol shrimp and read about them. There is some very cool data to be found. I'm lucky enough to find them in small sponges that wash up on the beach here in SW Florida, along with porcelain crabs, very small serpent stars, occasionally an anemone, gorgonian corals, clams, muscles and sea cucumbers. But there are only a handful of days in the year that the beach is a good collecting ground. After a strong cold front, which explains the excess of clothes! The water temp was about 70 degrees, but the air temp was in the upper 50's. The guy taking a photo with his phone had never seen a shark and was from up north... so shorts... brrrr!
Earlier this year I even found a juvenile sharpnose shark that I put back in the water and released.
thelawnrangler, did you ever start the frag tank we PM'd about?
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