Lol! Yes, they do, but the deal is, they take in waste as food, then reduce its volume considerably. What they excrete is immediately processed by worms and bacteria.
So you can think of them as the tank's trash compactors, and you can have as many of them as your tank can sustain off the waste of other creatures...not an infinite number, if you wish to have other things, because pretty soon you'd be specially feeding THEM, but you'd be surprised how tightly inverts can pack a dirty tank and keep in business.
Sk8r's right, to an extent. Not all invertebrates pick through the garbage. But generally the effects are the same. Just as well, most invertebrates have smaller amounts of waste and are usually cleaner than most fish.
True, Travis, you keep me honest: my peppermint shrimp prefer to eat as high up the food chain as possible. There are high-on-the-chain inverts, and I'd NOT pack my tank with them and expect anything but shrimp sushi.
:lmao: Glad to help. FWIW, mujtba, the chances of you having such a high bioload from inverts are slim, but to say they don't add to the bioload at all is an untruth.
Indeed they are much cleaner and at some point you might catch one eating the waste from another. My anemones release a large amount of waste and the other inhabitants feed or maybe just taste it anyway. I am sure that if you could watch a pod long enough it would poop too!
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