catching a pistol shrimp

[High tide]

Originally Posted by Nihoa

if you know the rock its in and can remove it easy enough you can freshwater dip the rock and thatll get him out. you need to be careful not to dip too long or you will kill the rock. less intense would be to give the rock a quick soak in less saline water and that would also get him out while being more gentle to your rock. the squirt method didnt work for us because he had an extensive network of tunnels to cruise through.

Thanks Nihoa, it's a Randal's Pistol shrimp and it lives in a sandy burrow, even if it lived in the rock I wouldn't be able to remove it as it would be a bottom rock in a fully established reef. I hear what your saying about the RO water squirt method, I know its tunneling is quite extensive. It sounds like I don't have many options, I posted on ReefCentral and there have been no valuable replies there. I might have to try the squirt method but this could be tricky because the shrimp built its burrow between some Frogspawn.... all this trouble to save a pistol, oi, oi, oi!

[karazy]

another thing is maybe catch it by surprise,
and quickly jab some tweezers in there (not too hard) and see if you can grab him that way.
also maybe try watching for him after lights out.
alot of inverts are active at night

[levi1803]

I tried all of the above and nothing worked, at the time I wasn't sure if it was a pistol or a mantis so I pulled the rock and took out the good old chisel and hammer and made some rock rubble lol, found the little pistol in there and ended up putting him back in the tank, he has now paired with goby.

This is what I found