Just wondering what you all recommend for cleaning my sandbed? i switched from crushed coral to sand about a month ago and its much better but seems to be getting a little dirty. What would you recommend (snails, starfish, goby)? I have a 12dx nanocube. Please put your inputs. Thanks

Nassarius snails will help stir it up. Get some red scar hermits to. Is your sand bed dirty from overfeeding? If you got some red slime Trochus snails will eat the red slime right up.

No i dont think its from over feeding. I only feed very little like twice a week. And i dont see any green slime just kinda dirt and waste on the sand. And also what is a red scar hermit? never heard of that.

My Strombus Conch does pretty well and he is fun to watch.

Red scarlitt hermit crab. They are very peaceful and will really clean up crap out of your sand bed. I would get 3 if I was you. I would also get 6 Nasarius snails 3 Margarita snails 2 Trochus snails 2 atrea snails. There is your CUC.

Also you can't have a Goby that will clean your sand in a Nano the sift sand for food and they run out pretty quick and end up dead in a few months

I have a few blue legged hermit crabs, some astrea snails, 2 turbos, and a peppermint shrimp.

+1 for the conch

Got a tongan conch today and everywhere its been is now white not brown like it was.

+1 for the scarlet hermit and nassarius snails. Both great for keeping the sand bed tidy

-1 to a conch in a 12g, especially if it has a lot of rock coverage. It may fit in now, but down the road...? I wouldn't do it personally. Skip the margaritas too I think, as a temperate snail whose range doesn't extend into the tropics it is probably a bad idea. Astreas die when they flip over, without true wave action or strong tidal current. I don't like them for that reason, but many people do, it is a matter of how often you will be there to right them. Hermits and nassarius are good critters for eating detritus on the sand bed, the hermits you have to keep an eye on, they will kill snails at times. Empty shells help reduce this tendency.

+1 Every other day I'm flipping one back over. Little nerveracking when you can't see them and are left wondering if they're wedged in between a rock somewhere.

Nassarius Snails are interesting to watch pop out of the sand bed. But they usually need supplemental feedings given the tank size and other competitors.

Cerith snails are also really good for cleaning the sand bed. Strombus conch can get pretty big for a nano IMO.

And don't forget good flow over the sand bed.

just siphon detritus on the top of the sand. Don't buy sand sifting animals.

why not buy sand sifting animals lakshwadeep?

Sand sifting animals sift sand to feed. They feed on all the stuff that makes "live sand" alive. In a matter of days most sand sifters can completely consume the entire contents of your sand leaving the sifter to starve over the coarse of a month or two. So unless you can find a sifter that will eat a balanced diet without having to sift through the sand you are killing the sifter very slowly.

This can be true for large sand sifters like some sea stars, gobies, conches...I agree these are wrongly advertised by companies as good choices for CUC when in fact they are eating all of the sandbed microfauna that you want to keep.

The best sandbed CUC are the microfauna like small fire worms (<2cm), amphipods, small brittle/serpent stars (<1cm), spaghetti worms, etc. A diverse sand bed with good water quality and flow will keep itself clean.

Small sand-sifting snails like cerith and small hermit crabs will also help clean the sand bed surface, will not consume the sandbed microfauna you want to keep, and will not starve unless you have no fish and are never feeding the tank.

I lightly siphon off my sandbed every week when I do my WC. I'm sure this sucks off some pods as well, but I dont go deep to siphon out the whole colonies. My nass are mainly interested in fish food, and they seem rather sensitive because I lost 1/2 in a week after adding them...my acclimation is my guess.

I have astrea snails that are doing great, and although they can flip over, they hold onto the rock with a death grip and you couldn't pull them off if you try! My margaritas all died slowly too, I don't trust them. I wish a store around me had snails besides margarita and turbo! I'm gonna end up ordering them online once my algae gets more out of control.

I used to skim off the top layer of my sand bed but I was slowly taking more and more sand from the bed. So I cleaned some of the sand I took out and tried to put it back in but it was a cloudy mess and sand got all over the coral and rocks. I spent 20 mins blowing off rocks with the baster. Now I rely on snails and hermits.