Wanted: Pistol Shrimp Whisperer...

[LTJGAlex]

Does anyone have any advice for how to...shall we say...try to discourage bad behavior from a tiger pistol/ Randall's goby pair? They paired up within 5 minutes in my 28g reef, and are adorably industrious...though once they got beyond collecting shells, the plate corals they drag across the tank every night are not happy campers...nor are the mushrooms and green polyps the pistol has attempted to replant.

All in all, it's adorable. But do they usually stop if you keep taking the corals back to where they belong? Should I just offer more shells?

 

[Calappidae]

Pistol shrimp are just heavy burrowers.

 

[TL1000RSquid]

Not a whole lot you can do other then either moving corals off the sandbed or attaching them all to larger rocks. My tiger pistol has probably disappeared $50+ in zoa's and another $50 in misc small frags.

 

[Sugar Magnolia]

Yes, they are very industrious little buggers. Offer them some rock rubble and shells to play with.

 

[Dendrobates]

It seems like anything on the sand bed is fair game. I've had them completely cover frags in sand, use acan frags as tunnel "doors," and even move large LPS corals like brains.

 

[MikeandNicole]

We have kept pistol shrimp and goby pairs since 2008. We have 2 tiger pistols and 2 candy pistols.
The candy pistols are less prone to stealing than the tigers.
The tigers don't stop stealing if you move something.
If you want to secure it, you will need to glue it to a piece of rock that is heavy enough that the pistol can't move it, or move it several inches up into the rockwork.

 

[Calappidae]

candy cane/randall's/red banded pistol shrimp is also smaller so it can't do as much.

 

[peasofme]

anything about 2 inches above the sand bed will disappear

 

[robotman]

Does anyone have any advice for how to...shall we say...try to discourage bad behavior from a tiger pistol/ Randall's goby pair? They paired up within 5 minutes in my 28g reef, and are adorably industrious...though once they got beyond collecting shells, the plate corals they drag across the tank every night are not happy campers...nor are the mushrooms and green polyps the pistol has attempted to replant.

All in all, it's adorable. But do they usually stop if you keep taking the corals back to where they belong? Should I just offer more shells?

Yeah my candy cane and yellow pistol seem to either kill nassarius snails and use them as door ornaments or sometimes just move them their and they crawl away and they remove them XD, I love watching them work, but eventually they will create a huge tunnel system, so you might want to start your frags on the higher part of the bottom 1/3 of your tank.

 

[LTJGAlex]

Thanks guys! I have both a tiger and a candy stripe but the candy is not paired with anything and he's very shy and retiring. The tiger is a captain of industry. I moved stuff off the sea bed and offered shells. He built this incredibly elaborate burrow with an arch made of shells, and he seems mostly satiated now. This is such an amazing hobby. Glad I got back into it.

 

[Calappidae]

Pistol shrimp are amazingly intelligent, when I had mine, she would use an empty turbo snail shell as a garbage can... whenever she would dig her burrow, she would grab peices of crushed corals she didn't like.. and stuff them right into the shell.