Reef Cleanup Crew

A cleanup crew is the cheapest useful livestock you will ever buy. Snails, hermits and urchins graze the film algae off glass and rock, turn the sandbed over, and eat the food your fish miss before it rots. Gallery Aquatica carries them at our shop in Tingalpa, east of the Brisbane CBD, and in the invertebrates range online.

Stock rotates, so what is on the shelf changes week to week. Ring 0420 484 584 to check what is in, or ask us about delivery of live invertebrates before you order.

What a cleanup crew actually does, and what it does not

The job is maintenance, not rescue. A crew grazes the thin film that regrows constantly on glass and rock, and it scavenges. That keeps a tank looking clean between water changes and it stops uneaten food breaking down where you cannot see it.

What a crew will not do is fix a nutrient problem. If a tank is producing long hair algae or sheets of green, that is coming from the water, and snails eat the symptom rather than the cause. Adding more of them to an algae outbreak is the single most common mistake here. The outbreak needs the nitrate and phosphate dealt with; the crew keeps the tank tidy once it is.

The second thing to know is that a crew is not a fixed shopping list. Stocking one snail per four litres, or whatever number is circulating this year, tends to starve them. A tank only grows so much film, and a crew larger than the food supply slowly dies off and adds to the waste it was bought to remove. Start with a handful, watch the glass, and add more only when the algae comes back faster than they clear it.

The grazers

Trochus Snail

The one to start with. Trochus graze film algae and diatoms off glass, rock and equipment, they leave coral alone, and they are the most useful snail we carry for a reef tank.

Their real advantage is dull and important: a trochus that gets knocked off the rock can right itself. Turbo snails largely cannot, and a snail stuck upside down on open sand is a dead snail within a day or so. In a tank with strong flow or boisterous fish, that difference matters more than grazing rate.

They reach roughly 4 to 5 cm across the base of the cone. We have a longer write-up at our guide to the trochus snail, and they are usually available: Trochus Snail.

Turbo Snails

The heavy grazers. A turbo clears more algae per snail than anything else on this page, and if you have a genuine film problem on the glass they will strip it faster than trochus will.

Two caveats. They are clumsy, and they do not right themselves reliably, so they need rockwork they can climb without falling far. And they are big enough to bulldoze an unglued frag on the way past. In a tank full of small coral, trochus are the safer choice.

Collector Urchin

The most effective algae grazer we carry, and the least subtle. An urchin will clear coralline and nuisance algae off rock that snails cannot get properly clean, and it works steadily rather than in bursts.

The cost is that it does not distinguish. It grazes coralline you wanted to keep, it decorates itself with rubble, shells and anything else loose, and a frag that is not glued down will end up somewhere else in the tank. Urchins suit rock-heavy tanks with a real algae problem, and they do not suit a finished aquascape with unglued coral in it. Glue your frags first, then add the urchin: Collector Urchin.

The sand crew

Stromb Snail

A sand sifter rather than a glass grazer. Strombs work across the sandbed and the lower rock, grazing film and detritus, and they stay visibly active instead of parking in one spot for days. They do not burrow out of sight permanently, which makes them one of the few sand animals you can actually see earning its keep.

They want an open patch of fine sand to work, so they suit a tank with a real sandbed rather than a bare bottom or a thin dusting over glass. There is a full write-up at our stromb snail guide, and they are usually available: Stromb Snail.

Nassarius Snails

These live buried and only appear when there is food. Drop anything in the tank and a nassarius will surface out of the sand within a minute or two, which is unsettling the first time and useful thereafter. They are scavengers, not algae grazers, so they clear leftover food and dead matter out of the sandbed rather than cleaning glass.

They need sand deep enough to bury in. A couple of centimetres is enough. Carried as part of the invertebrates range.

Hermits, and the honest warning about them

Micro Hermit Crab

Small hermits are good scavengers. They get into the gaps in rockwork that snails cannot reach, they work on film algae, and they clear food off the sand.

The warning: hermits need shells, and a growing hermit will kill a snail for a better one. This is not occasional bad luck, it is normal hermit behaviour, and it is the usual explanation when snails start disappearing from a tank that has hermits in it. The fix is cheap and it works. Put a scatter of empty shells in a range of sizes on the sand, slightly larger than the hermits you have, and they will trade up into an empty shell instead of evicting a snail.

Keep the numbers modest, give them shells, and they earn their place: Micro Hermit Crab. If you would rather not take the risk at all, a crew of trochus and strombs alone works perfectly well.

Also in the range

Depending on the week we also carry Peppermint Shrimp, Money Cowrie, Short Spine Urchin, Red Fromia Sea Star and Western Nano Strombus Snail. These come and go, so the invertebrates collection is the accurate view of what is available rather than this list.

Peppermint shrimp are worth a specific mention because people buy them for one reason: they eat aiptasia. Some do, some ignore it, and it is not a reliable treatment on its own. If you have an outbreak, treat it directly and read our aiptasia guide first.

Common questions

How many snails does my tank need?

Fewer than most stocking charts say. Start with a small group, watch how quickly the film returns on the glass, and add more only if it outpaces them. A crew that has eaten everything starves quietly and becomes a waste problem.

Are they safe with coral?

Trochus, strombs and nassarius are safe. Turbos and urchins are safe toward the coral itself but will physically shift anything that is not glued down, and an urchin grazes coralline indiscriminately. Hermits are safe with coral and a risk to snails, as above.

Will a cleanup crew replace water changes?

No. A crew redistributes and consumes waste inside the tank. Only a water change, or export through skimming, macro algae or media, takes nutrients out of it. If you want to export algae deliberately, that is what a refugium is for, and we cover it on the macro algae page.

Do I need copepods as well?

They do a different job. Copepods are microfauna that live in the sand and rock and feed fish and coral, rather than visible grazers you stock and count. See copepods for sale and our copepod guide.

Can I keep a pistol shrimp with a goby?

You can, and it is one of the more interesting pairings in the hobby, but we do not carry pistol shrimp. The goby half of it we do stock, and it is covered on the marine gobies page.

Where to start

For most tanks: a few trochus for the glass and rock, a couple of strombs for the sand, and nothing else until you see how much algae the tank actually grows. Add hermits if you want the scavenging and you are willing to keep spare shells in the tank. Add an urchin only if you have a real algae problem and your coral is glued down.

Everything is in the invertebrates collection. If you are stocking a new tank, the coral for sale in Australia page covers what to add and when, and the marine fish pages cover the fish side. For anything about delivery of live invertebrates, ring 0420 484 584 or email us before ordering.