Dealing with a predator in a reef

[Hartjl]

I had the exact same thing in my tank; the clicking, the shrimp and fish suddenly missing, etc. I tried the bottle trap method with no luck, my mantis was just to smart. At night I could watch by the moon lights and see him approach the bottle, but he would never go into it. However, the trap did bait him out of his cave so that I could see which rock he had tunnelled into (the one on the bottom of the reef of course). His hole was covered with a perfectly shaped rock to disguise the hole. I ended up pulling the rock out of the tank in the daytime when I knew he would be in it and chipping the openning wider with a chisel. Even with the hole open I could not easily get him out and had to pry him out with a screwdriver then chase him across the floor of my fish room.
Oh yeah, watch your fingers. The way he attacked the screwdriver I'm sure glad it wasn't a finger.