Best of luck with the hunt

just in reply to people saying no broken shells means no mantis... there are tons of speices of mantis, i have one in my reef thats only about a inch long if that, he doesnt go after any inverts, he takes food from me if i put it at his hole. but he clicks all day long, the clicking is usually them just borrowing in LR

Yup, I've had the same thing. They smack the inside of their cave to build additions :) Too small to kill any crabs, but big enough that I could hear it 2 rooms away.

I find if it is a pistol shrimp it usually sounds like your fingers snapping, a mantis sounds more like something clicking on glass.

Chris

im sure i have a pistol as well. Ive seen it a couple times under the rock at night but havent seen or heard anything for months. Then last week, click click click. I dont believe ive lost anything in the tank from it though. Be interesting when i start moving rock around when i switch over to my 45gal...

I had two hitchhiker mantis and a 1 pistol in the very first 25lbs of live rock i ever bought.
The big difference i found was the mantis click seemed to be three clicks in a row where as with my pistol it was one loud click. For a long time the mantis never harmed anything in my tank.....but after about a year i had some crabs and a pepperment shrimp go MIA. I had cut back on my feedings and i think thats when they started wanting more than frozen mysis.
Its something that i would personally keep an eye on and i hope that it is a pistol. Mantis Shrimp can be beautiful creatures and are highly intelligent and fast...but are nice in there own tank and not your reef. :biggrin:
Best of luck.

mantis haters! lol. or just hope its one of the speices that doesnt grow over an inch like mine.

I had the same thing, 3 clicks i saw him one day and ripped out the rock he jumped out on the floor. Was a peacock mantis full of color ended up giving it to someone on here. Never had him kill anything tho and no holes in shells

I'vve heard it in my tank too.....usually after the lights go off. I later discovered that a few of my Trochus snails were twisting around in their shells pretty violently... and it made a clicking sound on the glass....mystery solved...for me at least

my hermits always make noise when there shells hit the glass. especially when they climb the silicon and try to escape