Best sand cleaner?
- Thread starter Giants13
- Start date
karimwassef
Active member
I use a combination. They work differently so variety is really best.
I have one star and one sifting goby on a 96" x 32" sand floor (mostly exposed). That's as many as I would ever have. Any more and they destroy the fauna IMO.
I have 3 cucumbers - my favorite is a tigertail.
+ 2 tiger conch + 3 fighting conch + 1 large horseshoe + 5 small horseshoe + 25 nassarius + 100 cerith
It's like a concert and you need different instruments to make beautiful music.
I have one star and one sifting goby on a 96" x 32" sand floor (mostly exposed). That's as many as I would ever have. Any more and they destroy the fauna IMO.
I have 3 cucumbers - my favorite is a tigertail.
+ 2 tiger conch + 3 fighting conch + 1 large horseshoe + 5 small horseshoe + 25 nassarius + 100 cerith
It's like a concert and you need different instruments to make beautiful music.
shifty51008
12-5 Chiefs record
Horseshoe crabs will starve to death in our tanks so never a good idea to add these.
karimwassef
Active member
I've had them for almost two years... Need to feed enough and have a lot of open sand.
Cool! Well my fish are pretty slow to eat most of the frozen food I feed so I'm sure he's eating well...
Salt
karimwassef
Active member
I think the rule of thumb used to be 1 per 30gal?
It should based on bottom area IMO, but I didn't come up with it.
It should based on bottom area IMO, but I didn't come up with it.
These guys are great depending on how fine you sand is. The work bst in finet sand, fun to watch, and cheap.
cloak
New member
I usually just use a small power head to stir up my sand bed right before a water change. I know I'm not going to get all the crap out, but this has been done every month for the past 7 years or so and everything looks great. I used to have things like Nassarius snails, Conchs etc to move the sand around, but then I realized that these inverts are just pooping in the very same substrate I'm trying to keep clean, thus cancelling themselves out IMO. Also, the fascination with the these creatures is lost too. They don't really serve a purpose for me anymore and my tank hasn't skipped a beat because of it. GL.
karimwassef
Active member
So... The key is worms.
Everything that eats, poops... Right?
Well, except for sea cucumbers and worms, kind of. Their waste is basically at a minute or chemical level - not 'bulk detritus' level. The sand coming out of a cucumber is pelletized， but scrubbed
This is why a sand bed without worms is just a waste of space. You need someone with a strong culture of sand biofauna to seed your sand.
I ran my tank with no sand sifters at all for three months... Just those beautiful little stringy worms. I did that until they had solidified their foothold in the sandbed.
You were asking about 'sifters', not cleaners. So I didn't include the worms before. The sifters keep the surface agitated. The cleaners keep the sand healthy and create passageways down to the lower tiers of sand where the real work takes place.
Everything that eats, poops... Right?
Well, except for sea cucumbers and worms, kind of. Their waste is basically at a minute or chemical level - not 'bulk detritus' level. The sand coming out of a cucumber is pelletized， but scrubbed
This is why a sand bed without worms is just a waste of space. You need someone with a strong culture of sand biofauna to seed your sand.
I ran my tank with no sand sifters at all for three months... Just those beautiful little stringy worms. I did that until they had solidified their foothold in the sandbed.
You were asking about 'sifters', not cleaners. So I didn't include the worms before. The sifters keep the surface agitated. The cleaners keep the sand healthy and create passageways down to the lower tiers of sand where the real work takes place.
karimwassef
Active member
On cucumber poop
http://echinoblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-importance-of-sea-cucumber-poop.html?m=1
He refers to this
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0050031
By facilitating bacterial abundance and suppressing microphytobenthos, deposit-feeding sea cucumbers shift the microbial balance in organically enriched marine sediments and redistribute dissolved nutrients from the sediments into the pelagic environment. The associated ecosystem-level effects–significant changes in nutrient cycling and sediment OM content, demonstrate that sea cucumbers play an important functional role in the ecology of coastal ecosystems and may be used to counter eutrophication effects of finfish or bivalve farms.
http://echinoblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-importance-of-sea-cucumber-poop.html?m=1
He refers to this
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0050031
By facilitating bacterial abundance and suppressing microphytobenthos, deposit-feeding sea cucumbers shift the microbial balance in organically enriched marine sediments and redistribute dissolved nutrients from the sediments into the pelagic environment. The associated ecosystem-level effects–significant changes in nutrient cycling and sediment OM content, demonstrate that sea cucumbers play an important functional role in the ecology of coastal ecosystems and may be used to counter eutrophication effects of finfish or bivalve farms.
CStrickland
New member
that blog is cute. I'm a huge fan of his choice of this pic for the lead 
He highlights 5 pros of cukes, some of which I think are more beneficial to our tanks than others
1) They help buffer calcium/ph by dissolving the sand in their guts
2) They redistribute nutrients from solid poop to the water column
3) They break up the accumulations of organic matter at the bottom of slow moving bodies of water
4) Basically #2 again, they are good for plants because they break down poop into fertilizer that mangroves can access
5) Their guts have bacteria in them
2-5 sound kinda like the worms that help a compost pile go from dead stuff to fertilizer. I'm not sure I'd want that in my tank though. I think if I had the cukes I would need extra stuff like gfo or ats to sop up the fertilizer they contribute. It seems like it would be just as good to leave the nutrients inside the poop and just vacuum out the turd. I guess it's 6 of one or half a dozen of the other, depending on how simple/complex of a system the reefer is looking for.
He highlights 5 pros of cukes, some of which I think are more beneficial to our tanks than others
1) They help buffer calcium/ph by dissolving the sand in their guts
2) They redistribute nutrients from solid poop to the water column
3) They break up the accumulations of organic matter at the bottom of slow moving bodies of water
4) Basically #2 again, they are good for plants because they break down poop into fertilizer that mangroves can access
5) Their guts have bacteria in them
2-5 sound kinda like the worms that help a compost pile go from dead stuff to fertilizer. I'm not sure I'd want that in my tank though. I think if I had the cukes I would need extra stuff like gfo or ats to sop up the fertilizer they contribute. It seems like it would be just as good to leave the nutrients inside the poop and just vacuum out the turd. I guess it's 6 of one or half a dozen of the other, depending on how simple/complex of a system the reefer is looking for.
karimwassef
Active member
I'll take the processed nutrients over detritus any day!!
The nutrients feed my chaeto or ATS or can be exported with water changes.
Detritus is like a suffocating mat of death that clogs up the pores (openings) in sand and rocks. Cause bacterial blooms like red slime and other nasties.
The nutrients feed my chaeto or ATS or can be exported with water changes.
Detritus is like a suffocating mat of death that clogs up the pores (openings) in sand and rocks. Cause bacterial blooms like red slime and other nasties.
Similar threads
