How do you keep your sand clean?

What things do you use to keep your sand clean?

 

I have 2 Brittle stars that are supposed to be sand sifters, but they are more the lazy rock dweller type but are good scavengers.
I have 2 big electric blue leg crabs, but they just eat the algae off the rock and walk over my corals.
I have a sally lightfoot crab that I see in the sand from time to time but he likes the rocks better.
I have a emerald crab that drags himself through the sand, but nothing sticks to him.
I have a Tiger Gobi that sifts through the sand, but he is just one fish in a vast sand bed.
In the end, I have a hand attached to my arm that once a month I move through the sand and stir up the bottom and let my mechanical filter substrate catch it, and I clean it twice a day for 3 days.

-Chris

 

Lots of Nassarith snails.

 

Nice responses guys. I added fish. I meant to have that option in there too.

 

1 - Brittle Star (if you look in at night , he is allllll over the sand)


2 - Fighting Conch - always picking off the sand

3 - Asst Stombus, Turbos, Stomatella snails

4 - couple scarlet hermit crabs.....

5 - Chevron Tang - eats diatoms...picks up a mouthful of sand and spits it out clean!

My sand stays fairly clean except a center area of low flow, which gets siphoned.

 

How about Nuthin'

John

 

The birds do a pretty good job of it on the side of the house, hehe


Mike

 

Don't forget the 'cukes!! I have a couple of cucumbers that do more to keep my sand clean than all the snails and hermits combined!

 

What kind of Cuke do you have? I have been wanting one, but have not had the time to do the research yet.....

 

And knock over my corals, and pick fights with my other hermits, and eat everything in sight, and get so big that I have to buy additional shells for them every couple of months, and break all my chinaware, and now live in my refugium getting even bigger!!!