Cleaner Package at Petco

[Durbelethwen]

I was looking at the Petco website (because it is the closest pet store to my house) and I was looking at their invertebrates. One of the things they are selling is a group of cleaner invertebrates; for a thirty gallon tank, which is what I have, here is what they sell: 10 Cerith Snails, 5 Nerite Snails, 5 Margarita Snails, 1 Sand Sifting Starfish, 5 Red Leg Hermit Crabs, 5 Blue Leg Hermit Crabs, 1 Medium Cleaner Shrimp and 1 Arrow Crab.
And for a fifty gallon tank all of those multiplied by two.
My question is: with all of those cleaner invertebrates in your tank, where do you fit fish in your aquarium?

[jefathome]

Fisrt off, you do NOT want the Arrow crab. The "cleaner" shrimp will not clean anything in your tank either.

The rest of that stuff won't take up much room at all.

[curlykid]

and, don't buy from petco no matter what. they won't try to help you, and will most likely sell you something diseased and useless. find an LFS in your area, there's bound to be one.

[GhostCon1]

PetCo has that on their website? Wow...

First off, margarita snails wont last in any tropical tank since they originate from cooler waters and will eventually perish. The sand sifting starfish will likely perish as well since they live off on tiny animals in the sand bed, which most people don't have a deep enough sand bed to support them and if you do have a DSB, the sand sifting starfish eats the things you want in your sand.

The cerith and nerite snails are good, though. I would add two banded trochus snails.

The cleaner shrimp will not eat any detritus but will go looking for food when you feed the tank.

For sand sifting, the best bet is nassarius snails.\

And that's a negative on the arrow crab as well. They get huge and. iIrc, become a bit destructive.

[Mavrk]

Originally Posted by GhostCon1

PetCo has that on their website? Wow...

First off, margarita snails wont last in any tropical tank since they originate from cooler waters and will eventually perish. The sand sifting starfish will likely perish as well since they live off on tiny animals in the sand bed, which most people don't have a deep enough sand bed to support them and if you do have a DSB, the sand sifting starfish eats the things you want in your sand.

The cerith and nerite snails are good, though. I would add two banded trochus snails.

The cleaner shrimp will not eat any detritus but will go looking for food when you feed the tank.

For sand sifting, the best bet is nassarius snails.\

And that's a negative on the arrow crab as well. They get huge and. iIrc, become a bit destructive.

Yeah, forget the margaritas. The water is too warm. Forget the sand sifting seastar. They will decimate your sand bed and probably die of starvation.

Cleaner shrimp are cool looking and will eat some of the detritus.

Basically... +1 to what GhostCon said