Nano CUC reccomendations?

[_cpate3_]

I have gone through some different CUC in my 13 gallon nano and found that my absolute best was when I had hermit crabs running around the tank. However, they started to kill my snails and I got tired of replacing the snails so I decided to remove the hermits and add a couple of nerite snails instead (which seem to do absolutely nothing).

As of right now, my CUC consists of:
3 trochus snails
3 nerite snails
possibly 1 blue legged hermit left
2 nassarius snails
1 strawberry conch
1 skunk cleaner shrimp

My sand bed is starting to get gross by the time my water change is due, and I have some hair algae growing. As well as just plain old film algae. Nothing is out of control thankfully and I'm lucky to say I haven't experienced an "ugly stage" yet. But I am wondering what else I can add to supplement this CUC primarily for general maintenance nothing specific. If i could I would go back to hermits but I do not want my tank to be a warzone so are there anything that do the job like hermit crabs?

 

[Spare time]

You could go with a turbo snail, a tuxedo urchin (but it will eat coralline), cerith snails, etc

 

[Reef.]

by far I have found are tuxedo urchins and spiny Astra snails, shrimp and crabs imo don’t help much at all, shrimps eat loads so if anything they probably add to the issue not help it, not saying don’t have a shrimp as they are great in a nano but don’t expect much cleaning from it, the cleaning if any they do is to the fish not the tank.

 

[aquatic26]

+1 for the Astra snails. I have a regular variety and the Spiny Star Astra. I am in the ugly stage and have diatoms and some small hair algae on rock work and added two of these little dudes yesterday. They have already put a significant dent in the algae. I didn't want to add more than 2 and have them starve when the ugly phase passes (20g cube). Also, my LFS sells pretty tiny hermits. Maybe you could find some juveniles and then rehome them when they get too big that they are killing your snails?