Sand Sifting Gobies?

[ellebelle]

I am looking for something that will aggressively turn over my ESV sand. I have a ton of algae growing in it right now and it looks really ugly. After scraping up all of the cyanobacteria ... it still looks ugly.

I was considering a sand sifting goby even prior to my current algae outbreak, but I have read the people have very mixed results with them. What is the general opinion? Are they like mandarins where, once the live food is exhausted, that will be that? Or would they survive if I just baste cyclopeez into the sand once the currently living critters are exhausted? And I know there are several different genera of sand sifting gobies - is there a particular genus/species that are hardier? I am particularly fond of some of the Valenciennea species.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

 

[dreko]

A pistol shrimp will move lots of sand around...

 

[Killerdrgn]

This really depends on what goby your getting and basically up to the goby itself to accept frozen foods or not. Mine basically refused to eat frozen until the QT i had ran outta pods and it had nothing else to eat. But after it started eating frozen he was as happy as can be.
Though it didn't really move any sand at all since there were plenty of premade holes in my LR at sand level and would just hang out in the holes.

 

[yiliyang]

A bullet or sometimes called dragon goby will do a great job for you. Before mine died of old age, that is all he did. The only down side is that he will spit sand on your corals, mine seems to like to spit on the most pricy and delicate coral in my tank, he just knew witch coral with sand on it would bother me the most, and that is the one he spits on. I have seen a diamond goby do a great job in my friend's tank. Again, you have to make sure that you are prepared to deal with sand covering your corals..

 

[ellebelle]

Killerdrgn, what kind did you have?

Yiliyang, did he just spit sand all over the coral sitting on the sand level, or did he spit it up top as well? And did the sand actually damage any of your corals?

 

[aaron23]

i currently have 3 of these gobies .. http://liveaquaria.com/product/prod_display.cfm?pcatid=213&N=0

currently about 3" each, i thought they'd sift my sand pretty well .. THEY THROW THE SAND EVERYWHERE lol flow is pretty good in the tank but they do an amazing job in stirring everything up...

They started eating flake and pellet and mysis after a while and stopped going for food that was on the floor, they decided they wanted fresh food and not leftovers so they dart up in the water column and eat with the rest of the fishes lol :biglaugh:

 

[Killerdrgn]

I had a diamond too. He could have shifted the sand a bit but i really didn't see much going on, was just always in its cave until feeding time.
Oh i should probably mention this guy was tiny only like an inch maybe a little more.

 

[NYreefNoob]

get a cucumber they do an awesome job and no mess

 

[DevIouS]

If I catch mine....you can have the little :bunnies:'er!
:grumpy:

 

[ellebelle]

If I catch mine....you can have the little :bunnies:'er!
:grumpy:

I take it that's a recommendation against these fish.

 

[basiab]

Sand sifters are not going to resolve an algea problem.

 

[SIReefer]

I have 2 yellow headed jawfish. Interesting fish that keep the sand sifted around their burrows. I also have 2 engineer gobies who move large amounts of sand but you have to keep your corals off the sandbed or they will be buried. Pistol shrimps move the sand around also but that snapping sound was too eerie for me. (Kept thinking it was a mantis).

 

[h20 freak]

A bullet or sometimes called dragon goby will do a great job for you. Before mine died of old age, that is all he did. The only down side is that he will spit sand on your corals, mine seems to like to spit on the most pricy and delicate coral in my tank, he just knew witch coral with sand on it would bother me the most, and that is the one he spits on. I have seen a diamond goby do a great job in my friend's tank. Again, you have to make sure that you are prepared to deal with sand covering your corals..

heres a pic http://images.google.com/imgres?img...ragon+goby&gbv=2&svnum=10&hl=en&safe=off&sa=G
I had one,he kept all my sand very clean and accepted flake and mysis,and just about anything that I threw in there(died of heater overload if your curious)

 

[ellebelle]

Sand sifters are not going to resolve an algea problem.

I am quite aware of that. But they will help keep the sand all stirred up without my having to do it manually.

 

[reefman]

sand sifting gobies require a lot of sand area per fish which most tanks does not provide. they also eat up most of the "live criiters" in the sand which r very beneficiential.
if cyanobacteria is your problem, i would increase flow ,eliminate dead spots especially near the bottom n lower your no3/po4 levels.
i use nass snails to move my sand n cucumber for sand cleaning.
my sand bed is not spotless but i consider clean.

 

[ellebelle]

I know what I need to fix my cyano problem. I can't really increase the flow anymore without blowing the tissue off of my LPS corals. I had a nutrient spike while I was away and I'm doing lots of water changes and I just changed my phosban. I also bought 10 more nassarius snails to break up the algae.

The sand sifting goby idea isn't for combating cyanobaterica - as I said, I scraped it all off of the sand. The white ESV sand has just turned this kind of ugly brown color. I know I could manually stir it, but I was trying to come up with a less labor intensive methods of turning over the sand bed.

 

[Awibrandy]

Lissa, I have the same sand with the same ugly brown color. I also have a PITA engineere gobie(if I catch him he is out of here), yellow gobie, pink spot gobie, tons of nassarius, fighting conch, sandsifting star fish, I run phozar in phosreactor, ac in a second phos reactor, poly pad, chaeto, and I still have the ugly brown sand. I have no nuisance algea in the tank except a build up inside the overflows which I remove manually once a month, or so when it starts to block the water flow.
I don't know if this helps in your decision making, and if you do find an answer to this problem please let me know!

 

[inked]

Is it wrong to use these guys and snails to help clean the tank? It seems that everytime someone asks a question related to algae someone else chimes in and says its not going to fix the problem. As a newbie to all this it really does get confusing you see clean up crews for sale all over the web, Is it wrong to use them? IMO I havent seen anyones tank that is algae free and dont think there ever will be. I am probably opening a huge can of worms here and my intention is not to insult anyone. Arent "clean up crews" meant to help maintain the tank? If there is not suppose to be that kind of algae in our tanks what do these critters eat in the wild? I know the water chemistry needs to be with in the desired ranges, Flow needs to be adjusted and lighting effects also contributes along with feeding. With all that said will that mean that my tank will stay algae free and I will not have to clean the glass and substrate? I honestly dont think it will and this can easly be proven by broswing members gallerys and seeing algae in there tanks. I feel these guys are used to "control" algae growth and help us maintain our tanks.

ellebelle sorry for jumping in on your post and from your pics I hope to have your problems in the near future lol!

 

[ellebelle]

Inked, let me see if I can explain. YES, you are absolutely supposed to use snails and hermits and other little critters as a clean up crew to keep your algae in check. Basically, if every system, there is going to be some algae. The goal of a reefer (or at least, my goal) is for the algae in my system that is produced every day to equal the amount of algae that my snails eat every day.

A lot of newbies post that they have an algae problem, and it is a SERIOUS problem, such that there is no way that the clean up crew could possibly chow down on all of it before new algae is made. Also, some types of algae no clean up crew member will eat (i.e. cyanobacteria, bryopsis). In those cases, there is often something out of whack. Either there is not enough flow, too much light, high phosphates (probably from too much food or tap water or crappy skimmer or all of the above). You basically want to get your algae to a minimum, and then let your clean up crew stay on top of it.

What happened to me is that I think I had some temperature problems and a large open brain died while I was out of town for a month and a friend was watching my tank. This has led to a spike in my phosphates, which I am brinigng down with regular water changes, new filter media in my phosban reactor, 13 new nassarius snails and poly pads. I also manually removed a lot of the real problem algae and now I'm left with a sand bed that is kind of an ugly brown from the naturally occurring organisms that live in the sand. I was looking for an easy solution for something that will turn over the sand bed for me, eating some of the critters and generally keeping it looking good.

Hopefully this makes sense.

 

[inked]

Thank you ellebelle it makes perfect sense, Just gets confusing at times when you here it "wont fix a problem" when some algae in a tank is normal and not a problem at all.