Rock Burrower

Hi All,

I don't have a photo, but I am hoping that it may be an obvious answer.

I have what appears to be something burrowing away into my live rock. It is leaving little piles of grey "dust" at the opening. Where there is a hole visible, it is about 3-4ml in diameter with piles of grey dust laying against the rock.

Any ideas what this may be? If it is too broad a question, I will try to take a photo.

Thanks
Sandie

 

Pretty broad.
What livestock do you have?
Any gobys, pistol shrimp?

 

Do you hear a clicking sound from tank? If so, then it's a mantis shrimp. Pull that rock out & use a syringe to dose a high mixture of Calcium down the hole. We had a mantis hit hiker before & this is what we did. It will kill off any coralline algae near the hole. But rinse with saltwater afterwards to get calcium out.

 

+1

Could also be a Xanthidae crab; it, too, is not reef or invert safe and should be removed.

 

I don't have a huge amount. I have a 300L tank (70-80 gal?) About 50kg live rock, a trochus, a red starfish, a feather starfish, a small piece of rock with some little zoas, two morphs, one large and 4 small hairy mushrooms (LR Hitchikers), a bi-colour blenny, a one spot foxface, 4 P J cardinals, a pair of clowns and a bubble tip hosting.
The tank has been running since last Oct and from the first load of live rock I have heard clicking! I have never seen a mantis so I was told that it is probably a pistol? Would this be true? I have a number of different holes happening into the rock, would it be the one creature or multiple?
I am hoping that it is a pistol because I would have to dismantle the whole of the LR to get to the one with the holes! If only I had known at the beginning what the clicking was, but as this is my first sojourn into the world of marine.........

 

I read on here that a mantis' click will be several clicks in a row and a pistol usually makes one or two loud clicks very intermittantly with long stretches in between the pops I call them.

 

My pistol shrimp will pop 1-3 times and then stop for a while. It can be really loud. I have heard it in another room in my house at night over all the tank noise. Pretty interesting.
I see my pistol on occasion, he comes out when it's feeding time for a plot second and then disappears under the rocks again.
I do not know what the habits of mantis are. So I really can't say much.

 

3-4 mm? That would be really small for a mantis.... Maybe a peanut worm or some other worm I'd guess. Also, I don't believe any species of mantis or pistol shrimp actually burrow, although, they may live in existing burrows. Tough to say from the description, but from the size, I'd guess a worm.

 

Why are all of you people so violent towards Mantids? xP They just want to be loved!

In all seriousness, if it was a mantis, your clean up crew would be gone. There are species of semi-aggressive pistols that are very small. Wouldn't kill anything, just give whatever was bothering it a headache. Also too small to cause any serious damage to rock scapes. the worst it will do, is hunt down a copepod, or two.
Happy reefing.