click click click

[Rikko]

What kind of interval is there between the popping? My pistols both have a snap that sounds like a marble hitting a piece of empty glass, and rarely repeat it more than once every five seconds or so. Mantis can often do a tink-tink-tink-tink when they're tunneling or hunting.

My girlfriend has a (presumably dead now) mantis in her tank that had been killing all her crustaceans for well on a year and the only way she was able to locate him was to remove most of the rock to a tub and listen to where the snapping was coming from. By process of elimination she narrowed it down to a rock with a coral on it (damn it!) that was very porous. He showed no reaction to anything until club soda was squirted into the larger holes of the rock. POP-POP-POP... But still didn't emerge. Then he got drowned in it and still didn't pop out. The rock finally went back in the tank and we have to assume it died inside the rock.

(I should add that the dead crustaceans always left intact shells)

Good luck, buddy. If it's a pistol, watch for thievery (should have seen my face the day I found an acro frag holding up his tunnel door). If it's a mantis, you've got some work ahead of you.

She also tried various baited traps for the mantis. It managed to catch her mandarin and cleaner shrimp many a time.