Clean Up Crew

[OgreMkV]

The clean up crews offered by places like liveaquaria, tampabaysaltwater and bluezooaquatics... how reasonable in terms of animal content are they.

I've got a 46 bowfront, soon to be a reef. The CUC for these places for a 50 gallon tank is something like over 100 animals with 24+ hermits and 60+ snails plus more stuff.

Is that really overkill or is that actually reasonable? Are they expecting die off?

I just don't get it...

 

[apelaston]

glad you posted this. I am about to set up a 75 gal reef and I currently have a 30 gal. I have just been picing up crabs and snails as they are on sale for .88 cents (they rotate the sale at the LFS each week) so I am not sure when to stop buying them or if I should keep stocking up to the amounts that those sites say as well which is what I was going ot do pretty much or until my tank is spotless lol

I however am already not caring for the hermits very much for they are always picking at my GSP that are on the sand and they seem to irritate my small watchman govy quite a bit.....

 

[dilbert]

I think it depends much on the critters in the tank and maybe on the live rock, too, you bought, how much cleaners are needed.

In my pico are almost no algae after the initial brown algae bloom. Even the magnetic algae scraper on the glass I use maybe once a week. I even feed the hermit from time to time.

In contrary, the nano doesn't have an algae problem. All algae grow very well. Bubble, hair algae, red slime ... But it would be naive to believe that a cleaner crew could finish with that.

Algae grow because of too much phosphates and while I am trying to come down to 0.03 ppm phosphates in a civilized manner (I made once almost daily water changes of 10% to 20% to bring down my high nitrates of 40 ppm), I remove those algae mostly by hand and that way I also remove the nutrients they were growing on.

My snail also eats the tiny bubble algae. That's fine but the phosphates will stay in the tank when the snail is pooing.

In my view, cleaners are needed to remove that stuff that would be too difficult or tedious to get removed by yourself.

And, fish produce far more waste than corals or most other invertebrates. The more overstocking, the more waste, detritus, and so on.

With good water quality, you'll get much less algae, and less cleaners are needed.
And, BTW, 60 snails, for example, produce also a lot of waste.

 

[Reefscape]

The clean up crews offered by places like liveaquaria, tampabaysaltwater and bluezooaquatics... how reasonable in terms of animal content are they.

I've got a 46 bowfront, soon to be a reef. The CUC for these places for a 50 gallon tank is something like over 100 animals with 24+ hermits and 60+ snails plus more stuff.

Is that really overkill or is that actually reasonable? Are they expecting die off?

I just don't get it...

Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I hate these packages....

The clean up crew should be "always" be tailored to the specific individual aquarium based on algae levels, and adjusted to suit as and when required...

The packages offered are very much overkill and i guarantee that a good percentage of the critters in these packages "will" die via starvation.

 

[dilbert]

... and i guarantee that a good percentage of the critters in these packages "will" die via starvation.

And then the hermits will become fat and don't any algae anymore.

:grinyes:

 

[jojo22]

x2

Start out with a few snails and some hermits. if you get a type of algae research what will eat it and go from there.

 

[Almondsaz]

I agreed with all the comments above. I would start out with a small package that you put together. If you need more becuase they can't keep up with it then you need to evaluate why you have so much growth and it's underlying problems...and possibly add more to the crew. If you do it incrementally then you will be much happier.

IMO for a 46 I would get 1turbo, 2 trochea, 2 nassarius, 2 nerite. This would be my starting point. HTH

 

[OgreMkV]

Col, that's what I was looking for. I'm not a big fan of turbos though.

When should I add crabs?

 

[AnnetteG]

just wanted to add, as far as TBS goes, they might be including that much of a CUC because of all the stuff growing on and in the rocks and sand you're getting in their "package". However, you could just order a few pounds of their rocks and add it to whatever else you're getting and still get a nice variety of hitchhikers and cool things. That's what I did and I love it. I didn't order a package though, just the amount of rock I wanted and a bit of sand to add to my refugium.

 

[Charlesr1958]

I agree, I hate those packages, for one they almost always include the wrong animals (no hermits!) and far too many for a new system to support. Please see the below article and I hope its not too late...lol

A Reef Aquarium Clean Up Crew

Chuck