Olive Nerites - Caught in tidal brackish waters, can be acclimated to full salt in a few hours, need high alk to keep shells from dissolving. Small, but good algae eaters, 100% reef safe.
Lettered Olives - "submarine snails" are very hardy and beautiful predatory snails, their meal of preference is the marsh periwinkle, but will eat pellets or other meaty foods placed on the sandbed. Reefsafe, as long as you don't have an emotional connection with small snails in your tank.
Striped Hermits - Common Alabama hermits, can get huge, are as reef safe as any other hermit.
White Leg Hermit - Not as easy to find, doesn't grow as large, and is much more shy than the striped hermit. My white legged hermits were killed for their shells by the stripped hermits. I have only seen these in full-saltwater beaches.
Common Shrimp - Have a hard to feed fish? Take a little green aquarium net to a boat ramp and give it a few swipes. I can get more baby shrimp than I can use in a year, in about 20 min on a warm day.
Oyster Goby - A small brown/black/red goby, good eater, easy to care for. To shy for most reef tanks IMO.
Mangrove Snapper - One of the dumber things I've done, is put a baby 3/4" gray snapper in my reef tank. He went from 3/4" to 2.5" in about two months and became a ludicrously aggressive fish. Big teeth, likes to eat everything in sight. On a side note, if you go to BB and look into the top left quarantine tank, I believe he is still there.
(snail on right is a Florida Rock snail / Oyster drill)
Florida Rock Snail - Do not use this in your aquarium under any circumstances, they will be happy to eat your entire cleanup crew. The young snails have a beautiful red spiraled shell, don't be fooled.
Auger snail - harmless sand dwelling scavenger, think of them as our native version of a cerith snail. Reef safe, can be found in great numbers in the surf zone of our beaches in summer.
This is what I have so far, as I think of things, I'm sure I'll add more, please add any experiences you've had with native species.
