Best CUC member for sand

As stated Sand sifting stars will not live long unless the tank is large enough to support them.
What I do not like about some of the sand goby's is that they can spit sand all over your corals.

 

edit - nevermind. I was looking at the back of your tank when I said I thought there might be too little open sand for a conch. The other pictures finally loaded, and I saw the front.


what type of algae do you have? sand looked clean from picture, but maybe I didnt go far enough....or is it detritus you are looking to clean up? or just in general?

 

John - The pics you were looking at were before I started having the problem. Not sure what algae it is, but it's grayish green in color and binds the sand together. I had a gobie, but my Tang bullied him to death. Before the Tang took after the gobie, he kept my sand pretty clean. I noticed this morning that my Turbo Snail was working an area of the sand.

I believe the problem was related to feeding my Tang Nori and what was not eaten dissolved in the water. I have stopped using Nori, and added 24 more Hermit Crabs, Also an Emerald Crab and a Turbo Snail. This addition did a bang up job on the LR, and the level of algae on the sand has dropped.

 

By far the best sand cleaner is a sea cucumber that sifts sand. some are filter feeders, but the tiger tail, and black atlantic cuc are 2 examples of great sand cleaners. These are not hard to keep at all.

They eat the sand, and clean sand comes out after they clean the crud off of it. You can't get any better than that.

 

until they die somewhere sneaky and crash the tank lol

 

That's more of a myth than anything. I have debated this with someone else here a while back. Without getting into it here, I can say that claims of this happening are greatly exaggerated.

If you want, search for that thread.

 

horkn, I had a sea cucumber get stuck in a powerhead on an old 55G reef tank of mine... I woke up one morning to find it's remains sucked through the PH and lots of dead fish laying in the sand. It was a terrible morning for that tank... I know it was a freak occurrence, but I'd like to know your side of it, though...

 

That is an odd occurrence. If it was a sand sifter, that cuc should not have been on the sides of the tank. It was looking for food probably because there wasn't enough in the sand, and met an unfortunate end because of that.

I have had a couple for a couple years and never have had any issues. Mine crawled on the sides of the tank a little when I upgraded from the 90 to the 200. That was short lived though as the sand bed got re established in quick fashion.

I know several reefers that have cucumbers and have never had an issue with them. Keeping cucumbers might not be the best idea for a reefer that has a hard time keeping the tank's conditions somewhat stable though.

 

your observations may be correct, I could never keep my 55G stable that I had years ago for many reasons (no sump, no overflow, peripherals too small, no money back then)... though I learned a lot about what NOT to do and have applied my wisdom to my 120... I felt like having a cucumber was one of those things that I will never do again based on my experience, but I can see how it would work for folks who have stabilized their tanks and have no chance for a cuke to get nuked!

 

Well, I got an orange spot diamond goby several days ago... he spent the first day in hiding... the second day he cleaned up about 75% of my sandbed making it nice and white looking again... no more brown sand! He and my YWG are getting along just fine, too.

It makes me wonder how your tang beat your goby up... if you have enough rockwork, I would think the watchman goby could easily hide in places the tang cannot.