Strange noises coming from my tank... Mantis shrimp?

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Nickeleye

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Apr 13, 2004
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Ok, so once again I'm finding myself in something of a panic mode. The last few days I've been noticing clicking or popping noises coming from the tank. They're sometimes pretty loud and can be easily heard on the other side of my bedroom.

Last night I just noticed that the back side of the tank is bulging (it's acrylic). So first thing I start thinking is that the popping is the joints of the tank starting to give, but I checked all of the seams and it looks ok from what I can see. It's a Sea Clear tank and they claim these things are virtually leak-proof and they also say acrylic tends to bulge some. Can anybody verify this?

In any case, I know the clicking isn't my heater (I double check to see if the light comes on when I hear it the noise).

I'm thinking some of it might be the wood stand the tank is on is probably settling a little. The stand can hold the weight, but it wasn't used for a reef tank before so it's probably not used to as much weight.

Now, the tank is only two weeks old (as far as being a SW tank... my friend used it for about 8-9 years prior to myself as a FW tank) and I've got TBS rock in it. I'm sure any of you who are familiar with TBS rock would know it comes loaded full of hitch hikers - some good, some bad. We tried to get off as many crabs, etc. as possible, but some things still managed to get in the tank and I've been eradicating as needed. I wasn't sure if I had any mantis shrimp or not, but now I'm seriously starting to think that I may. I've been seeing a lot more worm-like/insect activity in the tank lately as well as either small dead crabs (from the LR) or maybe they are just shells from molting. I'm not sure. Even if I've seen the mantis shrimp, assuming that's the problem, I wouldn't know it as I don't know what they look like.

Opinions? I'm really stressing about this. I just don't want this to turn into a very expensive mess on the floor.
 
I have about 8-12 small pistol shrimp in my TBS LR. They're fine. They make the occasional crack and pop, but just scavenge and don't bother anyone. They are extremely shy, and it may be months before you actually see them. They look like little lobsters.

Mantis are a lot less common, and you will probably hear repeated cracks as they try to obliterate their prey. Pistols usually just pop once or a few times. Also, mantis see in the red end of the spectrum, so a red filter may not work for them. Their color vision is better than ours.
 
I've used the red filter before to watch mine (way back when)--it could see the light, but it wasn't afraid of it. It would still come out and watch me--very intently, I might add.
 
You ain't kidding! That little shrimp had a more predatory, cunning look than any of the big mammals I've encountered in the wild. Most of them just want to get the heck away from you--that bugger would come right up to the glass, swivle his head back and forth, examining a finger I'd put up to the glass. If it had been a clubber, I wouldn't have risked it. As was, I didn't tease it again like that.

Edit: Important note--he wasn't free in the tank. He was in the overflow box on the invert tank--so couldn't have hit the glass, just the acrylic box. Not sure I'd be brave enough to try that if it had easy access to the glass!
 
Well, in either case... mantis or pistol... can they really make that much noise?? That's pretty unreal if I can hear it from outside of the tank isn't it?
 
Not unreal at all. Many different aquarium critters can make noises clearly audible outside the tank--in FW, many loaches and bottom dwellers are known for making clicking noises that can be heard across the room. In SW, mantis and pistol shrimp are the best known examples, but there are others. I can hear my trigger clicking his teeth together when he gets excited (sees the food jar :rolleyes: ).
 
Really? That's amazing. I never really thought about noise coming from the tank. I always figured that the water absorbed all of the noises made by anything in the tank (fresh or saltwater). So that makes me feel a little better.

Does anybody know much about how acrylic tanks bend once filled? This being my first large tank ever, I'm not completely familiar with the details about tanks. Bottom line is that I shouldn't have to be worried about this think exploding, right?

Sorry about all the paranoia, but when a lot of cash is at stake I tend to get worked up sometimes.
 
In the case of pistols and mantis, the sound comes from cavitation. High-speed movement of a "plunger" in the pistol's claw actually vaporizes water. The snap is the sound of the bubbles imploding. It is also possible for the implosion to generate light, a phenomenon called sonolumiescence. I'd love to see that, but no flashes in my tank so far.
 
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