Clean-up Crews
- Thread starter mihkaail
- Start date
Sugar Magnolia
New Member
What size tank do you have? I can recommend species and quantity if you give me your tank size. 
Thanks Magnolia
I was gonna get a 2.5-5 gallon but have had bad experience with hermits (killing turbos and other snails). Also (dunno why i havent thought of this before), wouldnt snails and hermits knock things over? never happened to me but just a thought.
Thanks for all your help
Cheers
Mihkaail
I was gonna get a 2.5-5 gallon but have had bad experience with hermits (killing turbos and other snails). Also (dunno why i havent thought of this before), wouldnt snails and hermits knock things over? never happened to me but just a thought.
Thanks for all your help
Cheers
Mihkaail
In a 2.5 or 5 gallon tank you probaly won't be putting in too many snails or hermits that are big enough to knock anything over. I'd go with 5 or 6 dwarf zebra hermits and 7 or 8 Nassarius snails. Both of these are some of the smaller varieties of their species and both are extremely effective scavengers and algae grazers. Neither are big enough to knock anything over.....and the zebras aren't aggressive, although even if they were, they'd really have no reason to attack the Nassarius because their shells would be too small for the them anyways......
Thanks firefish
I dunno, in my exp, the zebras were killing off giant turbos to leave empty shells in the front of my tank! But will take your advice on the narcissus snails.
BTW, snails eat algae right, but do they stirr and sift the sand? And i know hermits clear up debris and leftovers but do they stir/sift sand or eat algae?
Any help appreciated.
Mihkaail
I dunno, in my exp, the zebras were killing off giant turbos to leave empty shells in the front of my tank! But will take your advice on the narcissus snails.
BTW, snails eat algae right, but do they stirr and sift the sand? And i know hermits clear up debris and leftovers but do they stir/sift sand or eat algae?
Any help appreciated.
Mihkaail
Narkon'n'more
New Member
In my small 3 gal, the rocks came with a few snails (not that I seen them when I was buying the rock, but after about 3 weeks I had small snails everywhere. I really didn't put anything any my little tank for 6 weeks, besides the sand and rocks, the sand was live from my big tank, the water was from my big tank, and the rock was old rock with no die off going on, so I could have started immediately, but didn't.
So if you can be patient enough, you might grow your own clean up crew, or the beginning of one without even doing anything but waiting and letting life happen.
So if you can be patient enough, you might grow your own clean up crew, or the beginning of one without even doing anything but waiting and letting life happen.
That's weird. I've got 6 dwarf zebras and 6 Turbos as well, and i've never had any problems with them......as for the Nassarius, i've got about 4 or 5 and they spend alot of the time half buried in the sand bed so they're good for aeration and stirrng up the sand bed. if you don't like the zebras, i've kept scarletts and electric blues as well....both are effecient algae eaters but the electrics can get kind of aggressive......hope this helps