Show off your pistol shrimp and their burrows!

Betta132

New member
I'm curious who all has pistol shrimp, and what kinds they may have. I know there are Randall's pistols, tiger pistols, and those greeny ones that come in now and then... Any others?
My tiger pistol is about 2 1/2" long, is currently living with a Wheeler's shrimpgoby, and has what I'm guessing to be at least two feet of burrows. He's currently under the impression that my feather caulerpa is something he can kill and eat; he'll grab pieces, take them down into his burrow, and spend three minutes trying to kill them. After a while, he shoves all the bits out a back entrance. Silly thing.
I've seen him use bits of pebble and shell to help with his burrowing, so I decided to give him some materials. Namely, a bunch of mussel shells I found in California about three years ago. Here's what the primary burrow entrances looked like yesterday:

I'll post some progress pictures later. He's done some stuff with those shells, that's for sure!
 


And the Tiger Pistol, Watchman Goby shared the burrow with a extremely large Bristleworm.



No coral was safe in the sand bed and clams warranted endless snapping.
 
Nice!
My pistol shrimp killed every bristleworm he found... And the goby tried to eat them a few times. They would ball up in his mouth until he spit them out. I know he had a three-inch one in the burrow for a while, but then he grew and it vanished.
 
Everyone lived in harmony, unfortunately I had to use interceptor on the tank to treat for red bugs and the pistol just never pulled through. Even after years of sand storms and stolen frags it was still disappointing.
Wonderful relationship to watch, once acclimated boy they are resilient.
 
This is why you don't put a plate coral in the same tank as a pistol shrimp

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Man, that is one freaked-out shrimp! He probably thought it was going to get him.
Hey, yours is a lefty! My pistol has a right-handed claw... I wonder if one of those is unusual.
Did he hurt the coral, or just push it away?
 
Man, that is one freaked-out shrimp! He probably thought it was going to get him.
Hey, yours is a lefty! My pistol has a right-handed claw... I wonder if one of those is unusual.
Did he hurt the coral, or just push it away?

Well..

I was very disappointed I stopped recording because seconds later he was snaping it while he was holding it..

Every other day it was burried in the burrow..

I'm very stubborn.. I keep digging it out and placing it in the same spot. Eventually he stopped touching it ;) They'll learn after while.. give them a chance.

No damage to my vision is on the coral.
 
I used to have a fat green pistol that would do that with hermit crabs... It would grab them, sort of fiddle around with them a bit, shoot at them twice, and then drag them down into the burrow and try to use them for shoring. Of course, they'd just crawl out and cause a mini-collapse. Eventually they learned to avoid the burrow...
 
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