Pistol shrimp making a sand storm

[bassplaya12]

New pistol shrimp/watchman pair is making quite the sandstorm in our tank. Anything to worry about or will it eventually settle when he's done burrowing as much?

 

[bassplaya12]

anyone?

 

[Sugar Magnolia]

What type of sand did you use? If the sand is very fine grains, you'll be dealing with sand storms. You can add some courser textured sand to help alleviate the problem.

 

[bassplaya12]

it's aragonite i think. it's pretty fine stuff. Will it ever settle down or will it constantly be sandy as long as he's digging? If we just add some courser substrate on top, it will cut down on the dust?

 

[Bretts05jeep]

I have a dimond back gobie in my tank and when I first got him even the act of just filtering the sand would make a lot of dust in the water not to mention when he was making his tunnels. It took over a month but now when he sifts sand there is no dust. My thoughts are that the gobie filtering the sand removes the dust/detritus from the sand alowing it to get caught in my fine filter in my sump (which I was cleaning alot).

 

[Bretts05jeep]

frogot to mention I have very fine sand and it is very clean due to the gobie.

 

[Sugar Magnolia]

it's aragonite i think. it's pretty fine stuff. Will it ever settle down or will it constantly be sandy as long as he's digging? If we just add some courser substrate on top, it will cut down on the dust?

The pistol will appreciate some diversiry in the grain size. Supply some course crushed coral and some small bits of rubble near the main entrance to their burrow. The pistol will use the rubble and larger bits to construct an entrance. Mine is constantly reconstructing with it's building materials:

The roof of the entrance is a broken off piece of a Tunze PH holder. The sides are some rubble and empty snaiul shells.

I LOVE pistol shrimp! :lol:

 

[BEASTIEPENDENT]

It depends on species a little bit. Our Alpheus randalli for example loves digging and he doesn't know a state of "finished". He digs and digs and digs… and makes sandstorm in the tank…

 

[BEASTIEPENDENT]

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[bassplaya12]

sand settled some today. finally stopped digging for a while, a little murky still, but definitely clearer than last night. i see the goby doing what looks like sifting alot. i'm assuming eventually all the dust will be mostly gone. We'll have to get some crushed coral in there from our old tank to give him something else to work with. He tried using a hermit shell today haha