Clean-up Crew / Snails

[KSum89]

I Only have 2 ceriths and 2 nassarius snails and 1 huge turbo in my 55 gallon aquarium. Do you guys think i need more of the cerith/nass? i gave up on crabs since they love killing my expensive cerith snails for the shells.. I only have 1 small blue leg with 20+ multiple free shells for him. But it is extremely lazy.

I need more sand sifters but im afraid they wont get enough to eat, the frozens/flake foods i feed seem to float away from the sand bottom and the pellets always roll away by the time they smell it.

Also.. Will my nassarius snails eat my ceriths if not well fed? I know they are meat eaters.

 

[cashmoney6980]

From everything I've read, nassarius snails will only eat meat after its already dead. I've never heard of nass snails killing another snail for food. I do know that bumblebee snails will kill other snails if they get hungry enough, but IMO i wouldnt worry about nass snails doing that. Mine seem rather well mannered.

 

[Petrichor]

I had a similar question in my thread, but my tank isn't nearly as big as yours (just 24 gallons).

All the online sources say you need a ton of snails/crabs. For example, reefcleaners.org has a 55 Gallon Quick Crew package that has 71 cerith snails, 21 nassarius snails, and 28 nerite snails, and customers online are always saying that reefcleaners often sends many, many extras! That seems like an excessive amount of snails unless your tank has so much algae you can't see into it.

I've also heard per snail per gallon is a general rule to follow, but for nassarius it's one nassarius per 5-7 gallons (with 3" sandbed). I'll be good to get a more experienced person's view on it.

 

[danbstrong]

I had a similar question in my thread, but my tank isn't nearly as big as yours (just 24 gallons).

All the online sources say you need a ton of snails/crabs. For example, reefcleaners.org has a 55 Gallon Quick Crew package that has 71 cerith snails, 21 nassarius snails, and 28 nerite snails, and customers online are always saying that reefcleaners often sends many, many extras! That seems like an excessive amount of snails unless your tank has so much algae you can't see into it.

I've also heard per snail per gallon is a general rule to follow, but for nassarius it's one nassarius per 5-7 gallons (with 3" sandbed). I'll be good to get a more experienced person's view on it.

In my 55 my cuc consists of 25 nassarius couple turbos couple hermits and a serpent star seems to work for me another benefit of nas snails is they keep the sand stirred

 

[KSum89]

I was thinking of adding a serpent, but i read that they will eat fish that are sleeping.

 

[danbstrong]

Was thinkinh of adding a serpent, but i read that they will eat fish that are sleeping.

Ive had my serpent for bout 3 years never touched a fish just eats food that makes it down to it i did have a sally lightfoot that caught and ate a small blue hippo and a mandarin and i also had a mithrax ( emerald crab ) that caught a sleeper goby however it didn eat it but damaged its mouth enough that the goby couldn eat eventually starved imo serpents are safe ive never had an issue with mine

 

[Elmo1287]

I had a snowflake eel and it ate my shrimp and mini lobster or reg lobster then he tried to eat my hermit crab so I had to move him to a different tank when I worked at a flea market