Detritus Attack Pack

[jeromefong]

I was interested in getting some animals stir up my sand and process the detritus on the bottom of my tank. I saw this advertisement from the LiveAquaria site and was wondering if it would work for me. The standard pack has one Fancy Serpent Sea Star, one Sand Sifting Sea Star and two Tiger Tail Sea Cucumber.

They list all the animal as peaceful, but what concerns me is the adult size of each of these animals. They are all listed around 1 foot. Wouldn't four 1 foot big invertebrates be way too big for my 55 gal tank? Are there better choices?

thanks

 

[WRASSER]

Yes four 1 footers will be to big for a 55. How is your tank set up? and what are you looking to do? There are a few fish that could help too.
The wrasse family and goby family both play in the sand.Hope it will help a little :wink:

 

[jeromefong]

I'm trying to set up a reef tank with corals and aneomones. I still tyying to get the tank to settle down since I haven't been very good a keeping all the parameters steady. I'm planning to put some fish, but probably peaceful ones. I currently have a clown, a blue tang, and 2 cleaner shrimps. None of them cleans the detritus.

 

[WRASSER]

A bullet goby will be a nice addition to the tank, it will sift the sand for ya :wink:

 

[Anonymous]

jeromefong,

Regardless of what you read, nothing, and I mean NOTHING is going to remove all the "crap" laying around on your sand bed or on your rock. The best thing to do is get a small clean up crew, i.e. snails and hermits (but only if you like them) and syphone the crap out when you do a water change. Good flow will help to keep particals suspended long enough to go threw your filtration, but for some reason in most cases, it still tends to settle somewhere. A good maintainance routine will be your salvation and will aide in keeping your water parameters in check and stable.

 

[Tackett]

jeromefong,

Regardless of what you read, nothing, and I mean NOTHING is going to remove all the "crap" laying around on your sand bed or on your rock. The best thing to do is get a small clean up crew, i.e. snails and hermits (but only if you like them) and syphone the crap out when you do a water change. Good flow will help to keep particals suspended long enough to go threw your filtration, but for some reason in most cases, it still tends to settle somewhere. A good maintainance routine will be your salvation and will aide in keeping your water parameters in check and stable.

Very good advice, I was going to write the exact same thing and you beat me to it.

 

[romunov]

To keep all the "crap" in check, you would need a wide array of animals from all sorts of phyla. To accomodate them, you need a DSB with a nice sized tank, no or very little disturbance from fish or other animals (like a sand sifting star) and plenty of food to keep their breeding cycles going.

A sand sifting star stir the sand alright, but they look for some juicy animals to consume. Once they run out, they die of starvation, and you can't tell if it's starving or not until it's too late.

A cuke you mention will grow about 30cm (1 foot) and is too big for most tanks (say 100g and up with a lot of open sand).

You might want to give snails a read:
The Grazing Snails, Part I - Turbo, Trochus, Astraea, and Kin
The Grazing Snails, Part II - Abalones, Limpets and Nerites
The Grazing Snails, Part III - Conchs, Ceriths, Cowries, and Columbellids

 

[garagebrian]

romunov covered a lot of it, but I thought I would add my .02:

I would avoid the sand sifting sea star, it will starve in a 55 or 75 gallon tank. They shouldn't be kept in less than a 120 and probably not even kept at all. How do I know? I starved mine in my 55 7 years ago and then read up on them.

I would avoid all astrea or "turbo" snails and margarita snails unless you know they come from warm water. Most are cold water species and slowly die in our tanks. A LFS employee telling you he/she is SURE they come from warm water doesn't count Astreas from Florida are usually pretty good.

The problem with advice on snails is that each species has somewhat different dietary requirements. So while a "nerite snail will feed on filamentous and film-forming cyanobacteria, and filamentous green algae" - other snails may prefer not to (the full article on nerites by j. sprung is linked below ).

Nassarius Snails for cleaning up excess food:
http://web.archive.org/web/20010410...ibrary/articleview2.asp?Section=&RecordNo=166

Nerite Snails:
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/sept2003/invert.htm

Lots of info huh?

Basically:
Best:
Stomatella
Collonista
Trochus (warm water species)
Cerith
Nerite

OK:
Astrea (warm water species only)
Nassarius (only good at cleaning up excess food, you don't need too many)

Bad:
cold water Astrea
margarita
big turbos (knock over corals and even rocks)
sand sifting sea stars
Bumblebee snails (predator on some clams and snails, won't help with algae at all)

Feel free to ask any questions. I've also heard that hermits will eventually kill a DSB, snails, irritate corals, etc. I'm not fully convinced of this, but I only have a couple in my sump now. With the wide range of good snails above, I'm going to try no hermits.

B.