sand bed cleaners

[monti1]

What are you guys using as clean up for your sand beds? I am pretty sure that sand sifting stars are notorious for completely depleting life in a bed. I daeff dont want that but would like some sort of cleaner. What do you recomend?

[supervdl]

what about a sea cucumber?

[jlt23]

I have a tiger tail sea cucumber, a twin spot goby, and a dragon goby. Nice and clean. My gobies eat everything I feed the tank so they are not starving.

[monti1]

I was thinking about a few gobies. IF a cuke dies in the tank will it wipe out the whole tank or is that just a sea apple?

[reefCrawler]

find diamond goby, I only have one in my 150G but it does a tremondous job, this hard worker just keep on shifting sand all the time, it also eat all the leftover on sand after feeding.

cute little fin fellow too.

[Tajjo]

What about Nassarius snails. Anybody have any coments on them?

[supervdl]

The Nassarius snails do the job, but I think the get fewer and fewer over time. Not sure how the survival rate is.

[LobsterOfJustice]

I like tiger tail cucumbers. I would only reccomend them in a tank 75g and up. The tiger-tails will not nuke your tank if they die, but some other kinds might. Gobies are pretty good as well, but only some kinds sift, and some sift too much, so do some research on them. Nassarius and cerith snails help stir the sandbed, but for them to actually do a signifigant amount of sifting you would need to have way too many IMO.

[llorence]

I have two sea cucumbers in my 115 and they do a pretty good job of keeping the sand clean.