🐾
Tiger Tail Sea Cucumber
Holothuria hilla
A long, mottled-brown detritivore and one of the most popular reef sand-cleaners — it works the substrate and rock, picking up sand and detritus with sticky oral tentacles, digesting the bacteria, algae and organic particles, and voiding clean sand. It is excellent natural sand-bed maintenance, but carries the classic sea-cucumber risk: if it dies or is shredded by a pump, it can release toxins that wipe out the tank (a 'cuke nuke').
🐾
Porcelain Crab
Neopetrolisthes maculatus
A small, charming crab that lives among the tentacles of host anemones much like a clownfish, sweeping the water for food with feathery, fan-like mouthparts. Reef-safe and peaceful, it is kept for its looks and behavior rather than as nuisance-algae crew: it is a FILTER FEEDER of plankton and suspended detritus, not a grazer, so it doesn't control algae and needs a fed, plankton-rich tank to thrive.
🐾
Mexican Red-Leg Hermit Crab
Clibanarius digueti
A small, peaceful hermit crab from the Gulf of California with rusty-red legs, sold as an inexpensive, hard-working algae-and-detritus scavenger. It grazes hair algae, leftover food and some cyanobacteria across rock and sand, and is calmer and less snail-aggressive than many hermits — though, like all hermits, it still appreciates spare shells.
🐾
Halloween Hermit Crab
Ciliopagurus strigatus
A showy, larger hermit crab in vivid Halloween orange-and-white banded legs, popular as both a colorful display invert and a hair-algae-eating scavenger. It cleans hair algae and mops up leftover food and detritus, but its size makes it more disruptive than dwarf hermits — it can topple frags and, when shells are scarce, kill snails for an upgrade.
🐾
Margarita Snail
Margarites pupillus
A small, eager algae grazer often sold as cheap cleanup crew — but with a major catch most buyers miss: the true Margarites is a COLD-WATER, temperate North Pacific snail, not a tropical reef animal. It grazes film and hair algae well, yet kept at reef temperatures it is chronically stressed and short-lived, which is why it has a reputation for 'mysteriously' dying off. Best understood as a temperate-tank snail mis-sold for tropical reefs.
🐾
Marine Nerite Snail
Nerita tessellata
The saltwater (marine) nerite — a small, rounded intertidal snail and one of the most effective algae cleaners for glass and rock, eating diatoms, cyanobacteria, film and hair algae alike. Distinct from the popular freshwater Neritina nerite, this is the Caribbean 'checkered' Nerita tessellata. Like all nerites it grazes tirelessly and, in a normal reef, will not breed out of control.
🐾
Trochus Snail
Trochus maculatus
A hardy, top-shaped Indo-Pacific grazer widely regarded as one of the best reef cleanup snails — it eats diatoms, cyanobacteria, film and hair algae off glass and rock, and, unlike the flat-shelled astraea, can usually right itself if it falls. It also breeds readily enough in mature reefs to sometimes reproduce in the tank, a bonus for keepers.
🐾
Cerith Snail
Cerithium atratum
One of the most useful all-round cleanup snails in the reef hobby — a small, slender, pointed-shell gastropod (the trade's 'Florida cerith') that works both the sand bed and hard surfaces. It eats diatoms, film and hair algae, cyanobacteria and detritus on the substrate, rock and glass, and burrows through the top layer of sand to keep it stirred. Cheap, hardy and best bought in groups.
🐾
Malawa Shrimp
Caridina pareparensis parvidentata
A small, bold, translucent-amber dwarf shrimp from Sulawesi that — unlike the famous Sulawesi cardinal/lake shrimp — comes from flowing rivers and springs, not the hot, hard, alkaline crater lakes. That riverine origin makes it one of the hardiest and most beginner-friendly Caridina available, tolerating ordinary freshwater parameters and breeding readily without brackish larvae.
🐾
Babaulti Shrimp
Caridina cf. babaulti
The babaulti is a slender, color-shifting Indian dwarf shrimp best known for its green form, the 'green neon' or 'green babaulti.' Hardy and prolific once established, it can change shade with mood, diet and surroundings, and unlike many Caridina its young develop directly in freshwater with no brackish-larval stage — making it far easier to breed than crystal or tiger shrimp.
