New critters

[Sregnar35]

I bought a sea cucmber this weekend, hoping it will help stir my sand a bit. I've got quite a bit of cyano, and I really need to up my cleaning crew(10 snails, 10 hermits, 2 peppermint shrimp all in a 75). THe cucumber appears to be a tiger tail from the pics I see on the net. Unfortunetly he hides in my tank so I can't post a pic of him to show, but if im right and that's what he is, anyone have any luck or tips on these creatures, or cucumbers in general. Also, i finally got a mandarin, he's really small and he's eating well, here's a pic...

 

[cpn_aaron]

eating well is always important for mandarins. Mine took 2 months before he ate frozen mysis and brine shrimp and prepared carnivore meals. He would just graze on my live rock. Unfortunatly he had a mishap with my power filter when I was cleaning. He tried to hide in tube while I was at the sink cleaning the screen and he was sucked up and died. Your little guy reminded my why I like them so much. They're so beautiful.
On another note. A good method for controlling your cyano bacteria problem is to feed less, use DI water, and get a good cleanup crew. I had a bad problem for the past 3 months but I finaly got it right by cleaning crew and reducing the feed. In my 29 gal I have 14 pacific conchs, 10 snails, and 4 hermit crabs. The conchs love the cyano and just go to town, now there's only a few spots on my glass adn a patch every once and a while in my sand before one eats it up.

 

[Sregnar35]

Thanks for the tip, are conchs reef safe? Also, I feed my tank oncve a day, I feed 3 or 4 herbivorous pellets the size of a bb, and a pinch or 2 of reef flake. The pellets get eaten by the shrimp, and the fish I have go bonkers for the flake like they've never eaten before. I feel like cutting back could be too much underfeeding. I try to clip nori in my tank for the tang, but he polishes it off in about 1 minute. I suppose I could try feeding even less.

 

[Max]

If your tang can eat his seaweed in less than a minute you probably aren't feeding it enough. They need to graze pretty much all of the time I'd just throw a handfull of live calupera in my tank and let it eat when it wants. Yes, conchs are reef safe with a caveat they get kind of big and will nock stuff over that's not well secured.
hth
chris

 

[Sregnar35]

I clip nori on the glass that he eats, but there is alot of other algae he can eat growing on the rocks, plus he pigs out on the flakes i feed.