99% Proven reef safe inverts?

Cyproz

New member
Looking to addsome clean up crew help and just general more invert livestock. seems like all of the crabs are 50/50 hit or miss and i dont want to take chances with expensive corals. Most of the shrimp have good reviews being reef compatable. What all is pretty much proven to be reef safe for inverts?
any slugs? clams or scallops?

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Sea cucumbers, they never bother any corals and they make good sand stirrers too. Although becareful of the cuke nuke. Make sure to get the scavenger kind, not the filter feeders.
 
like any shrimps cause i do like the harliquin ones

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Harlequins aren't reef safe, they will eat up your starfish, they ate my sand sifting sea star which is like 2 times the size of the harlequin. It even managed to flip and and eat one arm of my 5 inch chocolate chip!
 
are star fish all pretty reef safe, i know i want a sand sifter but i also would like one of the cooler looking ones.
 
If it looks cool, it will generally die quickly. Some of the more "bland" starfish such as serphent stars are great for reef tanks. KP Aquatics has some cool serphent stars.
 
Agreed. Not all starfish are reef safe, like the chocolate chip starfish, they will eat up your polyps. (Although mine doesn't)
 
Porcelain crabs are filter-feeders, and are pretty much the only crabs I trust, aside from eeny-weeny species.
Acropora crabs are also safe, in fact they're good for the coral. They're just too small to really see.
Squat lobsters in general are too small to really threaten anything, although you'll never see them in anything past nano size.
Sexy shrimp are generally safe but are sometimes known to eat polyps.
Most cleaner shrimp are generally safe but will attack other shrimp. A pair of blood shrimp might work well.
Coral banded shrimp are probably reef safe, but I don't trust them with smaller fish, and they'll probably kill other shrimp.
Peppermint and camel shrimp are very hit-or-miss.
Brittle and serpent starfish (excluding greens, those are fish-killers) should be fine.
Sand sifters of any kind, especially stars, are pretty much doomed to starve in all but the most massive tanks.
 
And a lot of sea stars other than brittle stars, serpent stars and sand sifting stars can be very difficult to keep long term even if they are reef safe.

Most, not all, but most coral banded shrimp will kill other shrimp. The only fish they attack are ones that are already dead.

I've got very little experience with filter feeding cucumbers. I've had one for a few months now. It found a spot on the side glass that it likes in the first couple of days and it hasn't moved since. The 'collection' fans go in and out. It pulls them in quickly if I go near it with the turkey baster when I feed. But other than that it just sticks there and looks pretty.

On the other hand, I've got sand filtering cucumbers in all 4 tanks and they do just fine if you have enough sand and detritus.
 
I've got very little experience with filter feeding cucumbers. I've had one for a few months now. It found a spot on the side glass that it likes in the first couple of days and it hasn't moved since. The 'collection' fans go in and out. It pulls them in quickly if I go near it with the turkey baster when I feed. But other than that it just sticks there and looks pretty.

On the other hand, I've got sand filtering cucumbers in all 4 tanks and they do just fine if you have enough sand and detritus.
1. Filter feeding sea cukes tend to stay in a spot they like for a long time.

2. They can eat algae and other things on the coral, live rock, and glass, too. Mine rarely goes on the sand.

3. More colorful filter feeding sea cukes tend to be more toxic than turd cukes.
 
Cuke nuke :) that made my day

Until it happens to you and then it's not so funny! :crazy1:

I consider myself lucky that I have a 400+ gallon system and even when something dies, there are enough carnivores, live rock and water that I hardly even see any ammonia spike at all. But I'd just as soon my cucumbers never go nuclear!:blown:
 
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