Shrimp Help!

[Oliver]

Hi everyone. I bought home 16kg of live rock from my lfs two days ago, it rocks, it has 3 polyps and 1 brain coral already on it. anyway, there are some intruders that came with it i just noticed. I brownish crab, 2 black crabs, and on shrimp of some sort! It makes popping sounds so my lfs says it is either a pistol shrimp or a mantis shrimp! I have read that the pistol shrimp isn't too bad but the mantis is! The rock is fom Karathur, In australia, near broom, any ideas of what kind of shrimp it is???

Please help, need it badly so I know how ****ed I am,

thankyou

 

[Philbe]

I am sticking to the moto if in doubt, take it out. I had a few crabs , so I caught them and took them to my lfs for ID. I'm my no means an expert but if the crab has big claws and is not seen sweeping at the water, then it's probably not one you want in the tank.

HTH Phil

 

[mogurnda]

Hard to say without photos, but the crabs will probably have to come out. Crabs in the genus mithraculus, aka mithrax, are more trustworthy (but not completely). Their claws look more like tongs than nasty pincers.
Have you seen the shrimp? If it looks like a lobster, then it's a pistol and won't cause much trouble. There are photos of both in the hitchhiker sticky.
A few other potential differences:
Mantises tend to be active in the day, so you won't hear much in the middle of the night. I can hear pistols all night long.
At least with the species I've had, pistols make a "crack!" while mantises make more of a "tink."