what is your favorite house cleaning crew critters.

[jasonkola]

yes I am planning on adding a yellow tang here soon. so I know some algae should be left for the tang and my angel to graze on. so my clean up crew dose not have to be too good. the other thing I am thinking of as far as clean up crew is detritus eaters. I know my options are limited in this dept. but I have read that searpant and brittle stars are good at this. also I read some sources that said the nassarius will eat detritus and others that said not. so far the ceriths seem like the best overall snail. do they stay on the bottom of do they clean the rocks and glass too? thanks again for all the info. is been a great help.

 

[Anemonebuff]

Ceriths will occasionally venture on to the glass, but I found that turbos and astreas do the glass best. A diversity of snails is best IMO.

 

[davocean]

Lots of snails.
No more hermits in my tank

 

[jasonkola]

in my search to find a smaller snail than the turbo's to clean the glass and rock. I came across the nerite snail. any one on here know how they are?

 

[clord]

Nassarius snails are the most fun to watch

 

[Btboy2004]

turbos, trochus, ceriths, nassarius a few scarlet reef hermits for me.

 

[Nabber86]

Nassarius snails flat out rock! JUst get yourself a few and watch them go to work.

 

[sean48183]

I like astreas , nassarius, emerald crabs, and red and blue legged hermits.
I never really had a problem with hermits eating live snails. They eat the ones that fall over and die and that is a good thing in my book.
I never really had luck with any type of turbo snails for some reason. Must not like the type of algae I have in my tank I guess.

I never kept emeralds with sps but with soft corals they seem to do fine. They DO NOT eat fish. I tried feeding mine squid a couple times and it just crawled right over it but if I put a seaweed clip on a rock it would come cruising right across the tank to tear at it.

 

[Anemonebuff]

Crabs are omniverous and obligate feeders. They are usually reef safe, but not always. If ffod is scarce they will eat meat.

 

[jdieck]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6827621#post6827621 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by jasonkola
in my search to find a smaller snail than the turbo's to clean the glass and rock. I came across the nerite snail. any one on here know how they are?

They are good and I like them precisely because they can get into parts were others can't but I would not use them as the only ones in the aquarium, I usually suggest having 20 % of them as part of the crew.

 

[jdieck]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6827717#post6827717 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by clord
Nassarius snails are the most fun to watch

I like when at feeding time all come up from under the sand like ghosts out of the grave BTW, together with the stomatellas they are one of the fastest crawling snails I have ever seen.