Clicking In Tank?????

J

JAYDEE

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Apr 24, 2003
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Every so often i hear a clicking sound coming from inside my 125 reef tank. The sound is 2 or 3 clicks. Some days i hear them , some days not. I never purchased any pistol shrimp and have not noticed any mantis shrimp, or for that matter anything missing or dead! The only hitchhiker that came with my live rock that i noticed is a small crab. The crab is speckled white and black and seems to eat algae like my emrald crab.
Any idea what clicks?
 
Clowns can actually vocalize a fair bit, and Sebaes are louder than most. IME, it sounds more like a sharp grunting/grinding noise than a clicking, but this could easily be what you are hearing. Pistol shrimp can actually be quite tiny (under 1") and still make a fair amount of sound, and I probably caught a half dozen or so in my tank over a year when I was shifting things around. You might want to sit up at night for a couple days with a red light and see if anything shows its face...inverts can't see into the red spectrum, so they typically won't run. But, if nothing is going missing, I wouldn't worry too much about it.
 
I get that noise too. Havent seen any Mantis shrimp either, but i have got a couple of decent sized crabs that came in my liverock.
I suspect its them, as i didnt have clowns when i first heard the noise.

Got crabs?
 
Another vote for pistol shrimp. They make a very audible crack, we can hear ours in the next room, and you almost never see them. I have at least 8 in the tank, and for the first several months I would just see them as motions in the cracks of the rocks during long periods of observation. A few have become more outgoing recently, but it still takes some quiet sitting before they expose themselves.
IMO they are harmless, and add a bit of diversity.
 
I tried to use a flashlight the other night to see what made the clicks......
funny enough, every time i shined the light where the sound was I had my coralbanded shrimp in the spotlight. I know they dont make the noise so I assume that maybe it provokes this noise from whatever makes it.
oh well... thanks for the help anyway.
 
hey Awestralian,
Just be very wary of your crabs. Especially if they are sandcrabs or similar type of crab (not hermits though!). I had a small sandcrab and rockcrab come in with live rock and they do prey on fish. Even smaller ones can take something like a cleaner wrasse, and something like a Mandarin fish won't stand a chance. I found out the hard way when I lost my Mandarin fish. I just don't want anyone on this forum to lose a fish the way I did.
 
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