I sent this email to all the members please let me know if you did not recieve it and I will add you tio the list. Thanks

Greetings everyone,

My name is John Leeds, most of you know me from meetings or as Jokeloma on the forums. Jarrod Lee, Lori Pool, Kerry Leeds and myself will be your officers for the upcoming year.
I wanted to e-mail everyone to ask how their tank(s) were fairing and to find out what OMAS can do to help those of you who have had a loss. Please let us know as soon as possible so that we can try to put some ideas together on how we can help each other.

If your system is producing please consider adding one of your best growers to the donor list, it would be a great help. Richard Prince siren853@hotmail.com will be our 2008 frag program director so please contact him with requests or donations.

Several local fish stores have came forward to offer ways to help the club through this challenging time. Aquarium Oddballs is doing a 30% over wholesale on prepaid fish, Premier Aquatics is planning a bulk buy on snails and crabs(details to come) somewhere around .75 each once the club decides what kind and how many. If you have any ideas on what else we all may need please let me know. We would also like to thank the many other stores that have helped members with discounts above and beyond what we are normally offered. As well as all being very kind and donating their time and space to help others.

With the membership drive in March coming up quickly we will be having our frag demonstration at Aquarium Oddballs. Members will be able to take home several free corals that the club will supply.

We will also be working on other ways to help the group but we need your input so please email me your thoughts and recent developments. I would also like to get a phone number (cell phone preferred) for everyone in the event that something like this ever happens again. I would also like to encourage everyone to visit and post on our club forum that is operated and controlled by omas. http://z8.invisionfree.com/OMAS/index.php

Thank you,
John Leeds
OMAS President 2008
saltclub@hotmail.com
918-605-4912
Please email me at saltclub@hotmail.com if would like to be removed from this email list

Several people have emailed me already for the snails and crabs. Let's start a listing of who wants what. I would like to be able to limit it to one kind of snail and and one kind of crab. So please post your requested amount, when we finalize the grand total(the more the better discount). We will need to prepay with Premier or Lori our new treasurer.

John Leeds 25 crabs
25 snails (at least)

It would be a great help to identify type of crab and type of snail. We are going to shop all our vendors and see who wants the business so we can get the best price - lets start a list here.

Scott

1 red legs crabs
2 cateye snails

The best snail I have ever had is the cateye.Fast and eats like a champ.

I've never heard of a cateye snail. What type of snail is this? Sounds cool, and must be one heck of an eater if your only looking for 2 of then in your 110... Any details?

LOL The 2 is just a list number.Id like around 30 or more of these.I picked this snail up at oddballs and this snail lived in 50 degree tank water with no water movment.Since the tank has been going threw a little cycle I have has some brown like gunk growing everywhere.This snail has been knocking this stuff out like there's no tomorrow.

Duh, I was wondering why you wanted one crab, and two snails... Sounds like it may be a temperate or cold water snail (so many that are for sale end up being temperate snails) in that a true tropical snail wouldn't probably be able to live in 50 degree water. But even temperate snails usually live fine in a tank, though they may have a bit shorter lifespan as the higher temperature raises their metabolism a bit over their normal baseline.

Put me down for some crabs and snails!

I'm on board. I prefer blue legs & ceriths.

This is going to be hard to decide on one type of each.

My vote is Trochus snails, but not the ones that get huge. There are some that only get to an inch or so.

Blue legs for the crabs.

Let's get this ball rolling . . . . I need a clean up crew ASAP! :)




Kimberly

Kim, I think both are great. What I need now is how many would you and everyone else want. We need to prepay for about 500 of each to get to the discounted price. :)

Thanks

John
OMAS President

What is the rule per gallon for the clean-up crew? I have around 100 gallons with about 300 lbs of live rock, so I'm going to guesstimate that I need around 50 snails? Maybe more? Has anyone run a tank with snails only . . . no crabs?

For now, put me down for 50 snails and 10 crabs, but I'm definitely open to opinions on the proper number of snails needed for my size of tank.

Thanks again for organizing

Kimberly

I don't know what normal stocking rules are, but what I've experience is that if I stock in the higher numbers, I have slow deaths until they get down to a lower, more stable population. My 110 gallon tank seems to be able to support about half a dozen adult Banded Trochus over a long term. If I do many more than that, they seen to slowly die out until they get to about this number. In the end stocking a tank depends on a multiple factors. Some snails will very rarely move onto rocks, they stay mainly on the glass, others will tend to the rocks more, some hang out in the sand. In any tank, there is a fixed amount of glass surface, sand area, and rock surface. Depending on the species of snail, and the amount of glass, sand, or rock surface, you may need more or less. And larger snails should be stocked at much lower levels, consider the difference between a large Mexican Turbo, and a smaller Astrea Tecta.

I would agree that Banded Trochus are my personal favorite snail, though I'm not in the market for more than a few for my frag tank, so my vote shouldn't count on this buy at all. They have one big advantage over the more common Astrea Tecta in that they can often right themselves if they fall to the sand. I also have experienced them grazing on both rocks and glass. They typically stay pretty small, my fully mature adults are probably 1" in diameter, and pretty gentle as they graze around. Though they also are typically a bit more expensive than Astrea, as most Trochus species come from the Pacific tropics, and as such are shipped much longer distances than the common Astrea that are often collected in the Gulf of Mexico. If the buy is Banded Trochus, you won't need 50 for a tank that size, unless you have a lot of algae. I'd guess that maybe 25 at most, and you'll probably see a few of those slowly die off if there isn't sufficient food.

In a younger tank (mine has been set up 10 years now in one location, a few more before that in OKC), it's possible you will have higher algae growth and as such can feed many more snails for a longer term. But if most of the algae growth is on rocks, you need to have snails that will readily work the rocks.

As for hermit crabs. While many of us have them, including myself, there are also those, especially Dr. Ron Shimek (who spoke at CRASE this year) that consider crabs as terrible for a sand beds. His feeling is that they are opportunistic eaters, and they will eat basically anything they can get their claws on, including many beneficial worms and other sand and rock dwelling critters. Of course if you don't have a sand bed, or aren't concerned about sand bed micro fauna, then this isn't a problem. I've had a relatively stable population of scarlet hermits (Paguristes cadenati) now for probably 5 years, with I'm guessing less than 8 in my 110 gallon tank. Also, these are fully mature and pretty large for hermits (probably 3/4 inch), many times larger than the little micro sized blue leg hermits. I'm debating to take them out and move them to my frag tank to see if there is any better micro fauna growth in my sand bed, and to see if it will result in any patches of unwanted algae growth to spring up.

Of course everything I've said is geared toward a mature reef, not one that is going back through cycling and not yet fully stable. If your cycling a tank, it may be advantageous to add a higher number of snails and possibly hermits to help handle the initial algae blooms that often occur in younger tanks. As the tank cycles there may be sufficient food for quite a while to support a high number of snails and other grazers.

Thanks for the great advice!!! I think I'll revise my request to 25 Trochus and no hermits.

KJ

OK guys.....decide on 1 type of hermit and 1 type of crab for the best pricing......

Scott
Premier Aquatics

Scott in your opinion what are the best snails and crabs for our reefs?

Just FYI,

He was referring to a Deep Sand Bed. If you have a deep sand bed in a fuge and a shallow sand bed in the display tank, then they are beneficial to have in the display.

Just thought I'd clear that up. I've heard several people confused about that.


My vote would be for:
20 red leg hermits and
50 snails (either cerith, trochus, or astrea)

I posted on RC too, so don't count me twice. :)

My opinion of critters - First and foremost all are "opportunistic feeders" which simply means if the meal is easy they will take it. For that reason I personally prefer a hermit crab that will stay relatively small [i.e blue legs or left hand zebra hermits]. As far as snail go - they all prefer to eat algae in different parts of the tank. I really like to use cerith, astrea, and margarita snails. These 3 seem to do the best job of getting back on their foot if they get turned over. Most snails prefer cooler temps - with that in mind a 12 month life span should be expected.

Scott
Premier Aquatics

Good point, Dr. Ron was referring to any sand bed that you want to keep living sand bed fauna in, so in your example if your sand bed is for looks only (regardless of depth really), and your goal isn't to have a diverse sand ecosystem, it's safe to have all the hermits you want. I just wanted to point out that if you want to have the maximum diversity in your sand bed, hermits (or other things like sand sifting starfish) will not help this, as they will actively eat anything they find, and typically forage pretty heavily in the sand bed.

The beneficial nature of any scavenger like hermits is based on their filling a niche in your tank that something else doesn't fill. In my tank, I don't have many hermits, partly because I have a lot of bristle worms, which are quite effective in consuming any excess food or fish poo. If I didn't have these worms, I'd likely need many more hermits to make up for it. So my main need for hermits is for them to forage in the rocks for things the worms aren't interested in. Each tank is a bit different in this respect, and can also be influenced by your personal taste, some folks don't like worms, so they add something that can out compete them and keep their population low. But even though I have a DSB in my main tank, I like hermits, to me they are pretty interesting, so I keep a few, even though it would be interesting to me to see what else might live in my sand bed if I didn't have them.

Is there a timeline on the order? I'm getting pretty desparate . . . green hair algae just popped up. I can't wait much longer before I'm going to have to do a solo order.

Add my request to the count,
30 crabs,
30 snails

Of what ever the choice is determined to be.
Paul