Best Detritus Eater

[dhayden]

What wold the best eater of the mucky stuff be? I have a pretty coarse bottom, grunge :) Too coarse for a cucmber, my crabs dont seem to go for the stuff, blue legs. And the snails dont really seem to either, Mostly Margs, and a few Nars. Something killed about 10 Nars. on me. Might have been blue legs or a arrow crab i got rid of. Its a 20 gal. Maybe a diff. crab, red, or a conch?

[graveyardworm]

In my experience conchs feed primarily on algal films, crabs really dont touch it. You're best bet would either be a cucumber which due to course substrate you cant use. About all you're left with relace the substrate with something more appropriately sized, increase flow to help keep detritus suspended so it can settle in an easier place to remove it like a sump, or siphon it from the substrate as often as necessary.

[bertoni]

I never found anything that'd really work with a coarse substrate.

[Amphiprion]

The only things you will find that are good for coarse substrates (which I don't particularly recommend/like in the first plaace) are various bristleworms and amphipods.

[PatMayo]

If you have a coarse substrate and it's not very deep why couldn't you just vacuum it?

When I had my 46 bow set up I had a crushed coral substrate and I vacuumed it each week when I did water changes. I only vacuumed that portion that I could get to without moving anything. I had zero nitrates in that tank but I started the vac routine right from the get go and I was extremely careful with nitrient import and export.

Regards,

Pat

[chocolateblnt]

nassarius snail's are detriwhores ...

[dhayden]

Yea I am not too happy about the course substrate either now. The bed is probably 3" deep with a mixture of coarse and fine in there. Probably no way to get rid of that at this point? its not bad enough to put the whole system at risk :)

[dhayden]

Plus Im not sure what was with the last batch of Nars. Snails I got. They spent most there time on the glass. was strange..

[a4twenty]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7186436#post7186436 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by dhayden
Plus Im not sure what was with the last batch of Nars. Snails I got. They spent most there time on the glass. was strange..

they live in sand beds and probably couldn't penetrate the crushed coral. but as chocolatebint said it they are detriwhores lol.

[EricBrian]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7186491#post7186491 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by a4twenty
they live in sand beds and probably couldn't penetrate the crushed coral.

Or they were whelks. They prefer being on rocks and glass:
http://melevsreef.com/id/whats_a_whelk.html