What should I get to stir my sand?

nickbuol

nickbuol

Member
Well, I spent all day yesterday getting rid of my undergravel filter and crushed coral, and replaced it is a 3.5" deep sand bed (seeded with some new live rock, arag-alive, and some live sand from a friend)... Anyway, I also removed all of my hermits (about 35) in my 75 gallon tank as they kept killing snails. I have about 25 snails, both turbo and astrea, but they don't seem to want to touch the sand. I've heard that nassarious snails will dig in the sand, but I can never find them anywhere. My wife would like some sort of fish that would stir things up a bit, and that sounds fine with me, but I am not sure what to look into.
We have 2 cleaner shrimp, 1 emerald crab, 2 clownfish, 1 purple tang, 1 royal dottyback, 1 6-line wrasse, 1 cleaner wrasse....
Any ideas would be helpful.
 
von_rahvin

von_rahvin

Member
jaw fish do it locally. a horseshoe crab does it. star fish, i think i am going to get a reef friendly ray, we will see how many snails it eats before i get rid of it :) hope i can keep him though
 
@knight

@knight

Member
if you have a DSB, get a detrivore kit and steer clear from horsehoe crabs and sand stars. they will eat up the critters in your DSB.
 
nickbuol

nickbuol

Member
Detrivore kits sure are pricey... Of course, they have some added value of having "mud" or "sludge" shipeed with them to help with biodiversity...
 
silent bob

silent bob

Member
best advice to you is buy some jawfish, and brittle stars, stay away from sea cucmbers, when they die they become extremely toxic, some types of blennys burrow in the sand also
 
captain hook

captain hook

Member
A couple of months ago, I got some pretty cool new snails. They're called Baha snails. The guy at the store said they they will eat algae of the glass below the sand line. He's right! These guys are great. I find about half of them buried in the sand going along the glass. All you can see is their little mouth and base going to town on the glass. The rest of the time they spend above the sand munching the algae on the glass. They also have an extremely attractive shell. I bought a dozen of them for my tank to try out. I love them and will probably buy another dozen the next time I make it to the LFS. They are also available on-line and pretty cheap. I got a dozen of them for less than $10. Just thought I'd share, since they do stir up the sand along the glass. Peace.
 
dasnake03

dasnake03

Member
I bought 2 burrowing sun stars from this sight and they do a great job stirring up the sand,Diamond gobbies also do a good job.
 
twoods71

twoods71

Active Member
I recently got a sand star and it does a fantastic job keeping the sand surface clean in my 55.
Its fun to watch also. It comes up through the sand crawls across the surface and then disappears again.
Excellent buy for only $5.
 
reeffanatic

reeffanatic

New Member
i bought a golden head sleeper goby to go along with the few blue legged hermits and sand snails for my 29 gal..the goby turnes the sand over nicely by himself,and is a joy to watch,,he picks up a mouthful of sand and filters it out through his gills...
i believe he was a "steal" at $14.00 :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top