Hermits and trubos in refugium?

[JIM260]

I have a 150 gal DSB rubber maid refugium teaming with literally 1000's of various pods, micro stars, worms, gammarus and mysid shrimp, cheato algea. To add more biodiversity was thinking about adding some scarlett and blue leg hermits and maybe some snailS. Anybody have any input? I certainly do not want to loose any critters that are already in their.

 

[JIM260]

Just looked at my new post... my apologies for the terrible spelling

 

[billsreef]

That's alright, I'm not an english teacher I'm a biologist, as such I live for spell check

Algae eating snails and detritivores such as Nassarius sp. could be beneficial to your refuge. The hermits are another story, I'd leave them out as they could and would eat a percentage of worms and such that you don't want them eating

 

[charlesr1958]

I would leave the crabs and snails out, the crabs will reduce your diversity alot while the snails will eat what micro algae may be growing on the walls of the container, besides acting as food sources and living space for the "pods" and such, I always felt that micro algae growth in a fuge/sump was a much better place for it to be than in the main tank, look at it as competition for nutrients against what would/could grow in the main tank.

Chuck

 

[JIM260]

Bill,

Gotcha on the hermits. What snails would you recommend in addition to nass.? Will they produce a palegic spawn that would circulate food to the main tank?

Good point on spell check. I actually did try to pay for a premium membership. My wife has a Pay Pal account so it would not take my application w/o the password. She is out of town and i didnt know it. Need to retry.

 

[billsreef]

For snails I'd go with Astrea's, Trochus, and Ceriths. Stay away from the large Turbo's as they will eat macro's, including chaeto :eek1:

 

[JIM260]

Good point Charles. Snails may overharvest the algea. Lots of macro and micro in there and none in the main tank.