Sand dollars

[dirk_brijs]

I know they are forbidden to be kept in the States but here in Thailand we have millions of them on the beaches.
I have a few already in my tank but not sure what they eat. They are all in there now since the start 3 months ago and seem to be doing fine.
The question now is would they eat cyano as I currently have a small outbreak so would increasing my sand dollar community work?
I currently only have 5 or so?
Also would increasing my snail community help?
I ordered a few more Turbo snails (10) and could pick up some more nassarius snails from the beaches here (again millions of them here)
my tank is 160gallon and have on top of the 5 sand dollars maybe 10 nassarius, 2 cleaner shrimp and 2 turbos which is actually small as CuC right anyways?

 

[dirk_brijs]

anyone? or nothing known about sand dollars?
or advise on the quantity of CuC needed?

 

[kenny01]

I have had them in my tank before. I am not sure what they eat but the do shift your sand. I think they eat algae. They usually don't last long, in my experience.

 

[dirk_brijs]

mine seem fine soo far sometimes see them pop up but most of the time dont even see them.
Anyway about the size of my CuC is it big enough or what is actually the norm of number of CuC needed?

 

[scuba-al]

You need some more snails that eat algae, like astrea, turbo, cerith, nerite, and so on because right now, two is far from what you need. Do you have live rock? You really should, and buy (or catch) snails in small amounts until they have the amounts of algae where you want it.
And I have no experience with sand dollars.

 

[gmigmi]

I have my sand dollar for about two years now, It can go for months without being seen to a point that I forget its there, but then pops up for a short while and disappears again.
I don't know exactly what it eats but seems he's got enough food in my tank since he's going good and even grew a little since I got him.

 

[mscarpena]

Cyanno bacteria is not algae it is a bacteria. Sand dollars or a million snails will not get rid of it. IMO 5 sand dollars is too many for that size tank and will starve and die 1-2 is a good number. You need to use a red slime remover like chemi clean. Also nassarius snails normally do not eat algae and are good scavengers of excess food. I would say 40 small nassarius snails would be good and a mix of 100-150 algae eating snails is a good number for a clean up crew.