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

[Gablami]

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?

 

[ScottR]

Crabs are a no-go for me. They’re too opportunistic. Emeralds for bubble algae removal maybe. Others like Pom Pom are more ornamental.

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 in which my scraper does a better job. Snails also knock over frags. So I prefer not to have them. I have a few hitchhiker ones at the moment but I feel that they don’t do much.

 

[GeoSquid]

I have a picasso and niger trigger in my 180 gal, so no snails or crabs. I use a big ATS for filtration. I do have some gha here and there but I think a little algae makes it look natural. I do have a hippo tang that nibbles on the algae but only the short gha - if it gets long she won't touch it. Thinking of adding another tang.

 

[Wen]

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?

I am content with 2 large Mexican turbos and 5 Halloween hermits in my tank...not for their clean up abilities, just coolness. Haha
Back in the day used to throw in tons of blue legs and small snails. Honestly, the glass wasn’t any cleaner, nor the sand bed, nor the rocks and the collection of empty shells scattered about or reaching in the tank to right an asterea was annoying.
Give a snail & crabless tank a try, you can always add a few down the road.

 

[Difrano]

I only have Trochus snails, I don't like astraea they are too dumb. Also I consider hermits more for detritus and left over food cleaning than for algae control, unless you add 500 blue legs to a 65 gallons they don't make a dent on algae, and when they taste the meaty food forget about algae. I keep them for cool.

 

[Marsh980]

I'm also a no no for hermit crabs, pointless things and are just trouble makers. However, i confess to having one red legged hermit just because my 3yr old wanted it. God knows where it is and if its still alive.

I am an advocate for snails but only astrea, turbo, trochus, nassarius and conch's. Never had or tried any other species like Cerith or Nerite.

I find the snails always stick to the rock bar the nassarius and conchs of course. Them and my sand sifting starfish are great at keeping my sand bed clean. I do also have a number of shrimps and a lawnmower blenny to help with algae and detritus too.

Tangs are also great algae grazers, i don't have mine yet but my fox face is always pecking at the rocks. So are my wrasses but i'm sure that's not for algae lol

 

[Reefs and Geeks]

I've been running a 150gallon reef full of coral with just 2 urchins as CUC. I do have some algae here and there at times, but do a 5 minute scrub of the rocks once every week or two which helps. I also dose vibrant weekly.

 

[45ZoaGarden]

Crabs are a no-go for me. They’re too opportunistic. Emeralds for bubble algae removal maybe. Others like Pom Pom are more ornamental.

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 in which my scraper does a better job. Snails also knock over frags. So I prefer not to have them. I have a few hitchhiker ones at the moment but I feel that they don’t do much.

+1 hermits are little jerks. Snails only eat the smaller stuff like film algae so they really don’t do much. Emeralds and sea urchins however.... I put three emerald crabs in my 45 gallon that had quite a bit of algae and they wiped it out. There was gha, bubble algae, ulva, and some byropsis. Big pieces or small pieces, they ripped it up. Oh and I haven’t seen any half eaten corals yet! They don’t touch any corals unless they have to go over them to get to the algae. I also have one with quite a personality. Every night at 7:30 on the dot, he goes for a casual stroll all around the tank in front of the glass. He usually goes by a few times LOL. Sea urchins are also very effective but my tuxedo would take frag plugs and any zoas he could rip up. He went to my Waterbox 130 after he stole my hyper jubilee mini colony and trimmed it down to a frag

 

[andrewkw]

I don't think anyone's tank is successful because of snails or crabs. I have a few snails in my 112 gallon maybe 4-6 as well as 2 halloween hermits. They are more decoration then cleanup crew. As already mentioned they focus mostly on the glass which a human can do a better job cleaning.

You may need them in the beginning but an established mostly algae free tank doesn't really need them, but I think having a few around for diversity is nice, I just don't expect them to clean up the tank for me.

 

[Smarkow]

Urchins >> snails + crabs any day

 

[45ZoaGarden]

Ah, and I forgot. The urchin wouldn’t go near the thicker patches so it only got the thinner areas of gha. It also didn’t do anything for byropsis, ulva, and bubble algae.

 

[Gablami]

Thanks all. I was considering not having snails or crabs, and now I’m feel more supported to make the decision. Maybe my ugly phase will just be a bit longer.

Just not that much in the forums on the topic. Only how important a CUC is, which may be overrated (to get us to buy more). I like the idea of some urchins. I’m going bare bottom so that should also help me with coralline on the bottom.

 

[hotdrop]

Yeah not sure the snails actually do anything. Maybe the turbos but definitely not the other ones. Urchin is a beast on coralline though, I could probably fit 2 in a 35gal if I wanted bareish rocks

 

[sfin52]

For algea why dont you look at the seahare. They are algae eating machines.

 

[ScottR]

Thanks all. I was considering not having snails or crabs, and now I’m feel more supported to make the decision. Maybe my ugly phase will just be a bit longer.

Just not that much in the forums on the topic. Only how important a CUC is, which may be overrated (to get us to buy more). I like the idea of some urchins. I’m going bare bottom so that should also help me with coralline on the bottom.

The uglies phase is just a phase. I wouldn’t stock your tank to beat the uglies. It goes away on its own mostly, without intervention. I think we tend to freak out too much when we see something growing in the early stages. In some instances, it warrants jumping in but usually it goes away.

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Very interesting discussion. I keep nassarius to help catch leftover food since I'm a bit of an over feeder, and IME snails can help take down an algae overgrowth, but I do agree that if algae takeover isn't an issue, then snails may not be needed.

 

[muzikalmatt]

I tend to agree that snails don't seem to do a lot for algae cleanup, although I do like having them. I have a couple of trochus and astrea snails that I've had for over a year now that have gotten pretty big. I see them more as tank inhabitants like my fish now rather than members of the cleanup crew since I've had them so long. I do like having nassarius snails for food waste cleanup and stirring the sandbed. They'll also eat anything dead in the tank, but they don't eat algae. Conches are also great for helping keep the sandbed clean. By far my best algae cleaners though are my pincushion urchin and my bicolor blenny. I probably don't need snails with them around.

 

[jelazar]

No hermit crabs or snails in my 350 gallon tank, but emerald crabs have become my new go-to. The small ones live inside my larger birdnests and keep the bubble algae under control, where the tangs and foxface can't reach.

I put 10 emeralds in my 40g frag tank and they picked every frag clean of valonia and hair algae in a couple nights. It was amazing how fast they cleaned it up.

 

[Back where it all began]

For me it’s emerald crabs, large hermits, 2 urchins, conch, peppermint shrimp, my crabs leave everything alone and the hermits keep the rocks clean. Tang and foxface help out too.

 

[salty150]

Snails and crabs are old school, lol