Anyone have a successful reef tank with NO snails or crabs?

[Character85]

Hi all,

I’m seriously considering not adding snails or crabs to my new build. My last build I didn’t add any crabs, just snails. Early on they proliferated like crazy but over the years their numbers diminishes, I have a bunch of empty shells and now the few that remain are clustered in the corners of the tank waiting to die a slow death (I presume).

The drawback to snails are they can jam up pumps and powerheads, and can suck up alk after spawning.

I’ll have plenty of algae eaters for fish, and stomatella always seem to pop up. But is anyone running a healthy algae free tank without snails or crabs?

My tank now 4 months old is running great with no snails/crabs or CUC other than a lawnmower blenny. I simulate a deeper reef limiting 10k exposure to roughly 20%. My blue, violet, uv spectrum (23k equivalent) dominates at over 50%. I found this spectrum limits bad algae. The constant dosing of kalk keeps coralline growing with only a bit of GHA in hi flow spots that the blenny keeps in check. I feed fresh frozen foods and stay away from pellets and nutrient packed flakes. I have a HOB fuge with chaeto and tunze red spectrum algae light that does its job well. Even though I have a softy tank my nutrients are still super low. Nitrates around 1 and phosphates 0 - .50ppm. If I was going to keep SPS I would definately get the CUC to combat the extra growth though.

 

[Eric Miller]

I think everything serves a purpose but once the job is complete they either starve or turn to another source for food.

 

[Kjeldh]

Stopped using snails after consistent blue and red leg carnage to find new homes.

 

[wet_rocks_reef]

I have no snails and crabs, however my live rock is like 13 yeas old and it was from Fiji, so it has mini brittle stars and tons of worms and pods, so mho, not needed.

 

[ca1ore]

I’ll have plenty of algae eaters for fish, and stomatella always seem to pop up. But is anyone running a healthy algae free tank without snails or crabs?

Probably my tank has a few remaining crabs, but no snails. Both are useful in the early stages of a tank, but once you have herbivorous fish they are no longer necessary.

 

[Joe Rice]

Snails in my opinion don’t clean very well. They do remove some algae but they’re not really efficient. They spend most of their time on the glass...

I find that if I clean the glass every other day there isn't enough algae to attract the snails and they spend more time on the rocks.