need some advice about stocking my clean up crew

psariandras

psariandras

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May 18, 2007
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I have a DSB on my 55, that is finally ready to have a clean up crew.

I want to ask what is the best( and cheapest) way for me to get a clean up crew?

Is it better to:
1) buy one from a site (it seems like they cost about 50-75$), if so, any suggestions?
2) buy a bunch of turbo snails, hermits and some other indiviual invertebrates along with some of the reef mud from garf (I think this would be cheaper than a package from a site).


I put in a lot of live sand from bags from the LFS but I think I made a critical error when I put the bags in before I added ammonium choride and I assume that anything that was alive died when I added ammonium chloride to start the cycle.

My main concern is that if I do not buy some reef mud or some LS starter with benthic invertebrates and only buy turbo snails and hermits, I will not have diversity and various micro-organisms that live in the sand. My rock is MMLR so I am not getting diversity from the rocks since they do not come from the ocean.

can anyone give me some advice?
 
Buy your clean up crew a bit at a time and match it to what you need them to clean. On the sand I'd personally get a cup of live sand from a few different reefers, or just the pods even from a LFS, a good small one especially will at least sell them if not give them to you. Between that and the live rock you'll be fine.
 
:iagree:
 
I'd get some nassarius snails and a fighting conch or two. The larger Tongan Nassarius are excellent if you can find them, if not the vibex are a good alternative, although due to their small size you'll need more of them than the Tongan. Another great sand cleaner is the Atlantic cucumber. They do a fantastic job of keeping the sand nice and clean.
 
Also, stay away from the large package deals. They sell lots more than you actually need and many will die off from lack of food in a new tank. Avoid blue leg hermits and stick with the Cortez Mexican red legs that are more prone to eat algae. The blue legs are carnivores and spend their day pulling other inverts from their shells so they can steal them. Instead of astrea snails, look for trochus snails. They look similiar, but the trochus will also go on rock and has a much better chance of righting itself if it flips.
 
Thank you "Me No Nemo" for the advice :)

one other thing, I thought I understood what to do, but the more I read, the more I feel like I don't know what to do, maybe it is just me but there seems like there is a lot of misinformation about how to do this. :)

My question is, when should I begin to add the snails? There is no visible algae in my tank, so at this point I guess they have no food. I am going to get some cups of sand from the LFS reefs and put that in my tank and I need to do one last water change but other than that the parameters are ready to start stocking.

I wanted to have a school of green or blue chromis,a royal gramma,some cleaner or ordamental shrimp, and the clean up crew, and I am now unsure of what order I should put things in.
 
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