Clean up creatures, any advice?

[WildPraire]

Hello,

I'll soon be ordering some creatures for clean up purposes in my tank. I'm considering sticking with varying snails and not adding hermits or other crabs. From all the reading I've been doing, it would appear that over time the hermits kill off the snails, even if you do provide new shells. I'm not sure that it makes sense to buy both if snails will do the job. Then again, I don't know for sure if there are other reasons that I should have crabs. Opinions welcome.

Sue

[MERCEDES]

I am wondering the same thing for my 75g I am going to set up. I have read conflicting things and I am leaning towards not getting any crabs of any type. I would love to hear from the more experienced reefer's.

[capman]

Hermits will tend to reduce the populations of little critters (worms, etc) in your tank, but I think they are cool, and I like them for their own intrinsic value.

If you are looking for critters to scavenge up tiny (or big) bits of food that have gotten past your fish or other larger animals, I think the pinkish colored scavenging fireworms that many of us have in our tanks are pretty much unsurpassed. They are really amazigly efficient scavengers. Fostering good populations of other sorts of worms, as well as critters such as amphipods, will help a lot as well. Big populations of amphipods should also help with algae control.

As far as algae-eating snails are concerned, I have been very impressed by the hardiness of the tank raised Trochus snails (sometimes availalbe from Premium Aquatics. Also, Turbo snails have enormous appetites, though I have not found them to be as hardy long-term (I think the problems I have had in the past have probably been from starvation from inadequate algae in the tanks). Don't overpopulate your tank with herbivorous snails, since this might result in deaths due to starvation.

Bill

[capman]

You are welcome to some fireworms if you would like. The hardest part of giving them to you will simply be scheduling a pickup time, though this semester my teaching load is not quite so bad as last and this sort of thing might not be quite as difficult as it has been for me recently. I have not been able to make it to many meetings in the past year or more, which makes things harder.

If you want to come by Augsburg College to get some, pleas e-mail me.

DON'T PM me unless you have to....my PM box keeps getting filled. e-mail is better.

Bill

[capman]

By the way, I have found these fireworms to be completely harmless to tank inhabitants (though you don't want to handle them yourself due to the bristles), with one exception. When I had yellowheaded jawfish in a tank with a huge fireworm population there was trouble in that the fireworms liked to hang out in the jawfish burrows. This caused chronic skin irritation from the fish brushing up against them all the time, and this was a big problem for the fish.

Otherwise, I think these worms are wonderful, and I suspect they contribute a lot to the success of my tanks.

[capman]

Mercedes,

True crabs (vs. hermit crabs) such as the so-called emerald crabs and sally lightfoot crabs are really wonderful animals and will probably behave themselves (and will be good scavengers), but pretty much all crabs are perfectly happy to eat your fish or many other animals if the opportunity presents itself. I have not had them bother corals, but some report some problems with emerald crabs with corals. Sally lightfoot crabs are faster than the emerald crabs, and I would not trust them with small fish. The emerald crabs (Mithrax sculptus), especially larger ones, are more sturdily built crabs with stronger claws. They will eat most anything they can find, but mostly eat algae and scavenge. Again, small fish (especially sleeping ones?) might be in danger, but these are relatively slow-moving animals.

Some of the other crab types would be downright hazardous animals to keep with fish (e.g. the swimming crabs that are related to the blue crabs people eat), but they are incredibly interesting animals, and some of these would be fine in a fishless reef tank. These are not at all likely to show up in most pet stores though.

There is hardly a cooler animal than a crab (or shrimp) though, and in my lab tanks that I maintain for college teaching I have tank compartments devoted to various crabs and shrimp (including two 20 gallon compartments devoted to mantis shrimp!).

[Twins Guy]

i highly recommend diversity in your clean up crew. All those sand/substrate critters (worms, pods, etc) are great. I'm also a big fan of nassarius and cerith snails. You may only see the ceriths at night when they venture out of the sand to clean glass and rock-or spawn. Nassarius snails are omnivorous scavengers and will flock-again out of the sand (finer substrates better for these guys)-at feeding time-using their proboscus to follow a scent. They're a riot to watch-you've never seen such a small snail flat out cruise (fast) like these guys. Ok that makes like 6 sentences about a snail-sad day-but really it's like night of the living dead elephants everytime you feed. And they're acrobatic to boot-you'll know what i mean if you ever see them get overturned in a current. In my tank i use both these snails as well as astreas (zero luck with "mexican" turbos here-may try some more on of these days-with that zero water shipping/acclimation method) and a variety of crabs (scarlets, red-tip reef, emerald). I like britttle/serpent stars as well but they're frequent suspects in all fish/critter disappearances (i think they have a bad rap). Have Fun!
tg

[capman]

I think the big green brittlestars (sorry, can't recall genus/species) are the ones to be particularly careful of with respect to fish eating. I had one that appeared to have eaten one or two sailfin mollies (caught at night while asleep?), and a year or so later a sally lightfoot crab that had just molted. These green brittlestars are very very cool though...very active at feeding time, and pretty fast moving. Just don't keep them with fish unless the fish are bigger than them.

I think a lot of the other brittlestars are pretty much perfectly safe. I have or have had at least 6 other species that have been perfect citezens of my reef tanks.

Brittle stars/serpent stars are very neat animals, and being able to keep such animals is one of the real bonuses of keeping reef tanks. A lot of people get all hung up on the corals (which are darn cool of course, and have exacting requirements that we need to build our systems around), but in addition to the corals, these other invertebrates are what make make marine tanks really special in my mind.

I agree with TwinsGuy, by the way, that Nassarius snails are very neat, for all the reasons he said. I use them for demos in my invertebrate diversity labs, and the students love them. I'd get a few in your tank just to watch, even if they were not useful as scavengers.

[tricksterpup]

I just gotta say a few things here.

Capman,
I wish I had your lab when I was a bio student at IU. We didn't have anything like that. yeesh..

And I am whole aggreement with this Diversity issue. As the hobby grows we are seeing more and more critters to add to the tank and attitudes change about old ones. I remember when starting and I am sure others remember that bristle worms were a bad thing for a tank and now they are wanted for cleaning the substrate.
I know a great site that does sell these critters for the tank and that is http://www.ipsf.com/
They carry a clam that burrows into the substrate.
here is a little dity on them.
These are captive-bred, tropical sand clams of the genus Tapes, which actively burrow into the sand and move about by means of a strong muscular foot. They are about 15 mm (5/8 inch) long, and they feed on plankton, detritus and dissolved organic molecules by means of their incurrent siphon, which protrudes slightly from the sand.

They also carry what they call a mini bristle star that only gets about a 1/2 inch in length.
But as things go, this site carries plenty of inverts and plants for the tank.


I have never ordered from this site but I will planning on doing it this spring once I get my tank setup.



jim

[Floppy]

Is there a LFS that has nassarius and cerith snails? I have only seen the astrea's and turbo's at most stores.

I don't want to order them online with the cold weather were having. They'd prolly never make it here alive.

Anyone know?

[capman]

Nassarius might handle a drop in temperature fine, since I think a lot of them are collected in the northern Gulf of Mexico (?)

Anyway, I've seen Nassarius for sale at Something Fishy

[otolith]

Wow, capman has summed it up pretty nicely. FWIW (and I'm sure some of this may be a repeat), stay away from any hermits that'll get larger in size. They'll take out snails for their shells, and they have a propensity to knock things over as well (think bull in a china shop). Also, the larger snails can do the same...where'd that freshly-glued frag go? can happen as well. I like the scarlet reef and blue leg hermits, since they stay small. No more left-handed ? snails, get too big and mean, the ones I have are banished to the refugium. If I had to do it again, I'd stick with scarlet reefs hermits and snails that like to stay in the sandbed (they don't do that great of job cleaning the glass anyway).

Tricksterpup also bring up the great idea of ordering a "kit" from IPSF to help get things going. This is a great idea, and beats trying to rely on just your live rock to help get the sandbed going.

[tricksterpup]

Yep,
Here is a website that has a great selection of snails. Florida Pets has Nassarius vibex snails for about 75 cents each and 25 Snails for $13.50. I hope this helps.

But yes, I am definatly going for a package deal once I can get my tank going, a long with if people are willing, sand samples from their tanks.
But IPSF has a great package for $99 that is a mix and match. I would love to get alot of the Caulerpa, "Tang Heaven" that they offer to help with my water quality.


jim

[JnS]

I have some nass snails, not sure how many is left, but I ordered in 200...lol
once the LR and corals are gone I will be able to get a count on them

as for hermits, I have very few, have always had a problem with hermits eating my snails for the shells lol

[tricksterpup]

Actually My favorite cleaner in the tank must go to the Spaghetti Worms. When I was running my 55 reef, they were every where cleaning the sand and live rock of wasted food and detris. I am also interested in these burrowing clams that are out there.
Here is a Question for everyone, What do you prefer or your favorite for Tank Cleaners?
Plus I got to find my way to Jerry's Personal store. Sounds like he still has some good deals.


jim