sand sifters
- Thread starter rooksy
- Start date
krazzydart
Member
well, Depending on what you are going to put in the tank...... and how deep it is..... green brittle star, hermits, snails, horseshoe crabs (they need lots of room) and when they get big are distructive to a tank!!!!..... the critters from your live rock will also move into the sand!!!!! (you do have live rock??!!)I hope so!!! some fish as well (blennies) dig in the sand making homes!!!!!
adrian
Active Member
You dont want to introduce any of the critters mentioned above if you are trying to establish a live sand bed, the cucumber, depending on what kind, tiger tail cukes are said to work well if you can get a healthy one, they eat the bacteria that coats the individual grains of sand allowing new bacteria to grow. Sea apples are so colorful because they are warning potential predators that they are posionous and can kill off your entire tank if they are injured or die in your tank or release eggs into your tank which can be deadly to fish. I was skepitical about this myself until last month a friend lost the majority of the inhabitants living in his 75 due to a sea apple death. Futhermore sea apples are filter feeders and do not hang out on or in sand, they usually find a spot on a rock or glass where there is a good bit of current and spend their days in that spot, rarely moving. The rest of the critters, like the sand sifting star which usually dont last more than a few months in most tanks due to starvation, horse shoe crabs which most dont have even close to the size tank needed to keep these, and the sand sifting gobies will feed on the inverts in the sand that actually help to clean it. Nassarious snails are an excellent addition to tanks with live sand beds, they spend most of their time under the sand eating detritus and will pop up to feed on food that lands on the substrate. Another good addition would be some bristle worms, mini brittle stars, and various other sand critters that live in fresh live rock, sand beds in other tanks, and there are also several live sand activators and detrivore kits available online to boost the critter populations in your sand bed. HTH
adrian
Active Member
Junk, sand sifting stars are not as harmfull to sandbeds as some of the other critters mentioned, other than the fact that they disturb a good deal of sand. The problem with the sand sifting stars is that they usually starve in a few months because they run out of food. There are all sorts of sand critters that will tend to your sand bed, bristle worms, great scavengers, various other worms that I dont know the name of 
some common names are spaghetti worms, medusa worms, these worms live in the sand and feed on detritus and scanvenge uneaten food, pods will eat detritus and some feed on algae, tiny starfish like mini brittles will feed on detritus, nassarious snails will also. You want to be able to look at your sand and see varrious worm trails and critters against the glass, that is if you sand bed is deep enough to support them, at least 4". All these critters will not only stir you sand in search of food, but to an extent,depending on the fish you have, will provide a live food source as well. If you have a lot of fish that will feed on the critters, wrasses, dragonets, ect. then youll want a refugium, either in the tank or connected to, in which these guys can breed. I have a ton of critters in my sand and most of them came from my live rock, you can also buy them online, and getting handfulls of sand from other reef tanks is a good way to seed your sand also. With a live sand bed you want critters cleaning and stirring it, but you dont want anything to big thats going to disrupt the low oxygen zones, gobies, large burrowing starfish and other larger critters can affect the effectivness of your sand bed by introducing oxygen into these low to no O2 zones thus killing the critters and bacteria that dwell there. I had a fiji sand star about a year ago, he did great for a couple of months, then all of a sudden he was in the open a lot more, I think he was searching for food, then he began to lose limbs and died. Most large stars that cannot be hand fed and must feed on food int he sand will die, some may make it in very large tanks, but most dont keep tanks with enough sand surface to support them. HTH
some common names are spaghetti worms, medusa worms, these worms live in the sand and feed on detritus and scanvenge uneaten food, pods will eat detritus and some feed on algae, tiny starfish like mini brittles will feed on detritus, nassarious snails will also. You want to be able to look at your sand and see varrious worm trails and critters against the glass, that is if you sand bed is deep enough to support them, at least 4". All these critters will not only stir you sand in search of food, but to an extent,depending on the fish you have, will provide a live food source as well. If you have a lot of fish that will feed on the critters, wrasses, dragonets, ect. then youll want a refugium, either in the tank or connected to, in which these guys can breed. I have a ton of critters in my sand and most of them came from my live rock, you can also buy them online, and getting handfulls of sand from other reef tanks is a good way to seed your sand also. With a live sand bed you want critters cleaning and stirring it, but you dont want anything to big thats going to disrupt the low oxygen zones, gobies, large burrowing starfish and other larger critters can affect the effectivness of your sand bed by introducing oxygen into these low to no O2 zones thus killing the critters and bacteria that dwell there. I had a fiji sand star about a year ago, he did great for a couple of months, then all of a sudden he was in the open a lot more, I think he was searching for food, then he began to lose limbs and died. Most large stars that cannot be hand fed and must feed on food int he sand will die, some may make it in very large tanks, but most dont keep tanks with enough sand surface to support them. HTH
thereefman52
Member
the star i have is smaller then the size of your palm, it is not a brittle or anything like that, and it is green. I have a 3 1/2 " DSB and be borrows in it, but not deep, he just covers himself in it, is this effecting the whole point of the DSB? i mean he does nowhere neart and inch deep