Cali Kid Corals

whats the best sand sifter

JRocha

JRocha

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I am need of a sand sifter that can sift over 100 plus pounds sand. I've had orange diamond gobies before but I don't like how they always happen to dump the sand on my open brains. What sand sifting goby is the most efficient and will least be likely to dump sand all over my corals?
 
The best sand sifter is a strong power head a gravel vacuum.

The most efficient goby...might be homo sapiens, often come in different sizes, males seem to be better at sifting sand than females. However, be careful that the homo sapien goby does not get too much ETOH, or they often dump sand all over the tank.
 
kvosstra said:
The best sand sifter is a strong power head a gravel vacuum.

The most efficient goby...might be homo sapiens, often come in different sizes, males seem to be better at sifting sand than females. However, be careful that the homo sapien goby does not get too much ETOH, or they often dump sand all over the tank.
Click to expand...

ROFL !!! :D
 
oops...I was thinking about Tribbles I guess.

For a real answer, "Sand sifting" as you are using it, is sort of a misnomer. I am guessing that you want to clean the sand, or at least keep it clean. Sand sifting creatures do sift through the sand, but they eat the small matter (animals, algae too ( I think)) that live in the sand, thereby reducing its biodiversity.

If you really want to keep the sand looking clean, the best bet is to have high flow over the sand, and then to find where detritus collects and syphon that out on a weekly/monthly basis. Then to really keep the sand looking clean, you need to stir or vacuum the top layer...so see, my first answer wasnt total BS!

-Kyle
 
Never really thought of gobies as a sand sifter, sure they make their burrows, some of them might actually filter it through to look for food, but overall I used to love those brown cucumbers (ones that look like someone dropped a deuce in your tank) it was fascinating to watch their multi-tentacle mouth that would make an anime fan squeal in joy pick up sand and eat it, only to poop out clean sand behind him in nice little cylindrical shapes.
 
my nassarius usually gets eaten by hermits, along with my astrea.

get a kent algae scrapper and stir up sand that way. I'm fighting cyano right now, covering the whole sand bed, but not rocks (thank god)
 
i have 1 sand sifting starfish, 2 nassarius snails, and 1 large tongan snail that does a decent job on my sand bed. ive seen sand sifting gobies wreck havoc on lps on the floor of tanks.
 
Had a Gold Head Sleeper Goby that did an awesome job sifting sand, but made a complete mess in my tank. Ended up taking him back the the LFS.
 
Sandsifting stars usually end up starving since they consume so much of the microfauna in the sandbed.

The best sandsifter that I know of are tiger tail cucumbers.
 
thanks guys. I have nass' snails but i have a lot of sand. no more gobies cause they put sand all over my open brains. sand sifting stars have done a good job before but my harliquin shrimps would have a field day with them. i was asking cause I was having a diatom problem but it ended so I think i will be alright for now. still want a few engineer gobies though.
 
I think the short answer is there isn't one, either they need more food then your sand will have which means you have to actually add food to the tank to contunie to feed them, which has the bi product of usualy adding diatoms or other algae from the un processed food being added, plus they throw the sand everywhere, or they are so small they don't make a dent in your sand bed.
 
they help with detritus by the rocks and yes they do throw sand everywhere but they look awesome as adults. i was able to keep 4 for about a year until my tank crashed. but we'll see what I do. i mean I have over 40 fish in my system and I am really sketch about adding more to it.
 
IME/IMO brittle stars are not in the "sandsifter" catagory. They may grab some stuff off it, but they don't sift through sand to get food, nor do they eat detritus like most sand sifters.
 
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