Sand sifting

I seem to have an amazingly high plankton population that tends to produce a ton of detrus! So I'm looking into getting some type of sand sifting goby... I've heard the diamond gobies are pretty much the best, but they are territorial towards other gobies. I have a somewhat shy fire goby (firefish). Does anyone have and knowledge how this will work out between the two? 50 gallon tank

 

The diamond gobies are not going to do much as far as detritus is concerned... They are bethnic invert eaters and when they stir the sand they are just trying to find them. They are also typically hard to get to eat frozen food... Matteuw1 has a thread in regards to mandarins that is somewhat similar to what you could potentially face.

Many people use sand sifting stars for the same reason but they fall into the same category as the gobie... If the sand bed is decimated in regards to 'pod population the SS will start to do poorly.

Why don't you just siphon out the detritus when you do water changes? Its much easier and you don't have to worry about potentially starving anything..

 

DR. Frag makes a good point about just syphoning the detritus out. But if you want something that sand sifts and that are easy to care for, you should try nasarius snails or a conch. I have both and they both do a nice job, although don't expect your entire sand bed to be stirred every day.

 

Conchs(fighting is best) eat diatoms of sand, which is a plus as most snails do NOT eat algae of sand...
Nassarius while they stir the bed they eat carrion, or other dead animals/left over food. Detritus will not be high on the list but like Guitarman said their actions will stir up the bed.

 

I have researched any types of snails that stirred the bed and found nassarius so I wnt out and bought a ton of them. They do stir small bits up, but nothing like I need! They seem to be pretty lazy tho and only come out from under the sand at feeding time... But I've never heard about the conch... How efficient are they?

 

Just did a quick search on google for fighting conch... Seems like it will work pretTy well in my tank. I read 1 per square foot, from experience what do you suggest?

 

As I mentioned before, the nasarrius snails don't do a great job sifting the sand. They are more nocturnal too. Conchs will spend most of the day buried and you probably won't see it much during the day. They make larger holes, but not many of them. They are really cool to watch though.

 

+1 on the conch...they do very well. Mine mainly stays active during the day and buries itself at night. Very cool to watch.

 

if its just stirring sand try horse shoe crabs i got two there fairly easy to look after just make sure they get feed as they find there food buried in the sand but just my two can do my entire 55G tank easily and sometimes they don't come out for days at a time but you can tell there moving around under the sand and one cool side to having them is if you can look after them (which apparently is difficult but so far i haven't had a problem) they molt there hole shells i already have two perfect conditions complete empty shells and hopefully ill have many more to come