[joecon]

I want a "cleaning crew" to eat the uneaten food and algae on my LR and sand. What kind of creatures would do the trick? Also, are they pretty hardy or are they fragile? Will they be OK in a tank with damsels, a maroon clown and a yellow tang?

Also, do they need "perfect" water conditions or can they tolerate some minor water imperfections?

Thanks!

[scubadude]

Welcome to Reefland

You really should narrow down what type of algae you are dealing with to target it specifically with snails/crabs that prefer it in their diet. Here is a list of a few snails/crabs you might want to consider.

• Astrea snails, great for cleaning film algae on glass and a little on rocks, but they are known for tipping over and not being able to flip back over, you need to watch them and flip them back over in this case or they will die on you
• Cerith snails, great for cleaning some film algae on glass and a little on rocks, but also great for stirring the first 1" of your sandbed as they graze in the top layer of sand
• Trochus snails, great for all around grazing of varied algaes but are usually a bit more expensive and a tad harder to find
• Turbo snails, great for grazing rocks and glass but are very bulky and can knock over small frags or rocks. Astrea snails are sometimes labeled Turbo snails which there is definately a difference in price and size compare pictures of both before buying.
• Nassarius snails, these are great for keeping detritus in check as well as eating any pieces of uneaten food, they also stir the sandbed. These snails are very small and can sometimes be confused with whelks which you should NOT put in your tank
• Blue legged hermit crabs, these little guys are probably my most favored crabs as they are small and can clean up your rocks fairly well as well as doing a little sand stirring
• red legged hermits these are generally bigger than the blue legged crabs and have higher odds of preying on your snails. remember crabs are scavengers and will eat snails if they dont have nothing else to eat.
• ermerald mithrax crabs, these appear to be great for grazing upon valonia algae.

NOTE: Snails are very sensitive to acclimation so make sure you slowly adapt to the temps, ph, and SG of your tank

Check your parameters to make sure you have no levels of ammonia, or nitrites, and your nitrates are under 20 (the lower the better) chances are they are if your fish are doing well but check anyway. Also check your PH and do very slow acclimation to your crabs and snails and you should be ok. Just dont get alot of them you might want to try a couple of each first from the LFS and see if they fare well as well as target your specific needs. HTH

[joecon]

Wow!!! Thanks a million for the info! Man, I never knew there were so many different types of snails and crabs I need to consider. I've always thought snails were snails and crabs were crabs. I will look at pics of these different animals to make sure I get the right ones at the LFS.

[Reefland]

Hi joecon,

You might find this article useful as well.
http://www.reefland.com/rho/0305/medprod3.php