clean up crew requirements

[BT05]

You might want to check on those hermits you have right now. Not all are bad, but certain species get really large and may end up going after fish. Make sure you have plenty of shells for them to swap or they'll end up fighting each other.

If they turn out to be good hermits, then I'd say that your clean up crew is just fine right now but you might want some more diggers like cerith or nassarius snails.

There's no real set formula for a clean up crew, but it's better to have a good mix than 10000000 of the same snail/hermit. I also think the 1 hermit/gallon thing is quite excessive - more like 1 hermit/5-10 gallons. I have about 1 hermit per 10 gallons in my tank and never have problems with them.

Also, don't forget about sea hares, cowries, abalones, urchins, brittle stars etc. if you really want to go nuts. I'd be careful about brittle stars though, mine ended up snacking on the occasional hermit so I banished him to the sump. He's just gotten too big... like 9" across big.

[dunl]

Well, a bag of shells from Michael's craft store outfitted one of my hermits with new digs on the first day (thought I had a dead hermit until I spied a nice, new, white shiny shell zipping along....), so hopefully there won't be any cannabilism going on there.

As for brittle stars, I forgot to mention that I have two of them. I'm liking the job that the turbos, hermits, and stars are doing so far, but I have a sahllow white sand bed, and I'd really like to get that stirred constantly if possible to keep it white instead of greenish, brownish, left-over-algae-colored.