Cleaning up critters for upper levels of live sand

[snails pace]

I have a 12 gallon JBJ Nano Cube up and running.

It is stocked with one clown, one green chromis, 3 turbo snails, and 4 red hermits.

The hermits do not really spend anytime cleaning the sand and snails do a good job taking care of he algae on tank walls and the live rock only.

The live sand is not getting cleaned of uneaten food, and fish droppings.

What is the best critter for sifting through the sand and cleaning the sand? and do I have any room in my tank for a new addition to take care of the sand?

 

[panmanmatt]

You could ad a couple peppermint shrimp to take care of the uneaten food and a few cerith snails to stir the top of the sand bed. Ceriths like to burrow in the sand so in doing so they will stir it up a litle.

 

[Jolieve]

Ceriths are more glass cleaners than sand cleaners and they are very slow. For cleaning the sandbed I'd avoid ceriths, there's a much better snail out there for the task. The superb, stupendous and very fast-moving, nassarius snail. You will be amazed by how fast these little guys can truck along the bottom of your tank!

Nassarius snails are detrivores that keep your sand bed sparkling and spend most of their time in the sand. I'd start with maybe five nassarius. If that doesn't have your sandbed sparkling in a month, then maybe add one or two more.

Not sure about the shrimp being compatible with the hermits, but... if so, you could still add the peppermint and have the nassarius snails too, so that's not ruled out. But for sandbed and decaying fish food cleaning, nassarius snails reign supreme in my book.

Good luck!
J.