Need A Cleaner

[lebloom]

My 75 gal FOWLR tank gets really dirty and the glass is becoming harder to clean especially the readish brown crusty spots. I never had this problem with the crust spots till I went reef. I only have 1 fish as of now, a yellowtail damsel and about 12 blue leg hermits I also have a lot of life in my tank. What really takes care of the glass, I mean what invert out there will do a good job cleaning my tank?

I also have a piece of LR thats got quite a bit of caulerpa growing on it. I have some die out and it falls down in my sand which makes it hard to clean out. Is there something which will eat this die off from the bottom?

[Boogiechillin]

For the glass, a lot depends on the type of algae growing on it. Sounds like it could be coralline algae, which is a good indicator for your tank, but kind of a pain to clean up. Assuming you don't have an acrylic tank, chitons will eat coralline off the glass, but they do it VERY, VERY slowly. Not much else has the "toothage" necessary to chew through coralline! (Urchins do as well, but they much prefer rock to glass).

As for the dead caulerpa, don't be too neat in cleaning this up. Dead macroalgaes release the iron and other minerals they used into the water as they disintegrate. This helps fertilize the new, live macroalgaes that replaced them. Leaving the fragments is especially important for macros that utilize calcium, like halimeda.