Need Help with Sand Bed Fauna 90 gal

stan13ag · Jul 24, 2015

Good Evening Reef2Reef,

I set up a 100 gallon tank around october of 2014. During the time I was waiting to fill the tank with livestock for the tank to mature, my wife and I got all mixed up with budgeting/Dave Ramsey(the Anti-Hobby) and I haven't really had the burn money/desire to spend on the Hobby.

Now that we are halfway out of debt, I am looking to spend some of my extra money to ramp up my tank. I never really added a cleanup crew before, and expected the live rock to supply me with a bit, but outside of hundreds of astrea stars, I didn't end up with many hitchhikers.

My sandbed has absolutely no animal life in it outside of the nassarius snails after ordering a cleanup crew last week of :
2 emerald crabs
1 lettuce nudi
7 nerites
30 nassarius snail
10 cerith
5 turbo
and 30 hermits

So the above crew plues 100's of astreas and a Wrasse make up my tank inhabitants.

Finally the question: Would you go out of your way to find some worms/other fauna to put in sandbed? or would you leave the sandbed for the nassarius snails?

saltyphish · Jul 25, 2015

I only have cerith snails in my sand bed and believe something else is lacking. I would add something else like cerith snails or a fighting conch.

Downbeach · Jul 25, 2015

How deep is your sand bed? What type of substrate? Beside the snails you have I would suggest this and this. As salty suggested a conch would be a good idea too.

stan13ag · Jul 25, 2015

My sand bed is about 2" of aragonite sand. I've always had bristle worms in my prior tanks and just assumed I would have some in this one but it's not the case. My wrasse may have destroyed them all. I do think I will try to fund a conch, and I also just gave the tank a bag full of pods yesterday as well.