cleanup crew opinions needed

[BTL]

Hi everyone,

Well, i am going to start planning my cleanup crew from my 25 gallon tank. It has a SD DSB, 20 lbs of LR (i am taking the "japanese approach" with this one) and various filters and skimmers and stuff running on it. I am going to do a NO CRAB cleanup crew so i was thinking about: 5-6 turbo snails, 10 nassurius snails, 1 black knobby cuke, and a few alge grazing starfish/urchins.

OK, here is my question. Would you guys add anthing else to this cleanup crew and what kind of starfish/urchins are the best for alge grazing?

Thanks

Ira

[FishKid]

I would leave the cuke, and starfish/urchin out of the clean up crew for the first couple of months.

My 30 gal (not much bigger than the 25) has the following Clean Up Crew:

30 nassarius snails
15 Cerith
2 queen conches
5 scarlet reef hermits (very reef safe, and fun to watch)
5 Black and White hawaii hermits (reef safe, but bicker amongst themselves sometimes, run around the tank like little monkees)
1 Blue banded hermit (reef safe, eats macro algae, has a cool coraline shell)


You can never have too many nassarius snails, ceriths are very good, I would replace the Turbos with Trocus snails, queen conches are good, but eventually get big, and need lots of open sand when older, The hermits are very good at stirring the very top layer of sand sand, and when you have a diatom bloom you will love them for how fast they eat it!

Im not holding a gun to your head and telling you to get hermits, but I think it should be a consideration!

mark

P.S. I posted a thread about my hermit eating one of my conches, well I was wrong, I found the Conch In the outlet pipe of my skimmer 8)

[Mikeman]

the cuke wil die in the tank as they need alot of open and also, i like nassurius snails and cerith, if your gone get a kit from ipsf, I would get the strombus, turbo and baby trochus with maybe 3 or 4 cerith

[BTL]

here is a pic of my tank, i have alot of open sand area as you can see. I was thinking about a cuke just because i have so much open sand.

[chromis]

Well, that is alot of open area, but not enough for a cuke I think. I would insted try nassarius snails and if you plan on upgrading to a larger size then maybe try a cuke.

HTH

[BTL]

ok, i will nix the cuke then. I dont think i am going to upgrade for a while after this tank, it is all i can manage right now (plus i have to move it to school ).


Ira

[Iron Crab]

I'm not an expert but I'm setting up a new system at this time. I'm also going with a DSB. Premium Aquatics have a snail listed that will clean the glass below the sand called the Baha snail. It might be worth a look see. Bill

[Mikeman]

baha snails are cerith snails

[Key Of David]

I've only had my 2 scarlet crabs for about three weeks now but I'm already a big fan of them. They're pretty civil/harmless and their one ambition in life is to find the ugly algae and consume it. They pick it off LR (cleaning dead stuff/debris off in the process), sand, and even try their luck at getting it off the glass as far up as their little claws can reach.

[szwedo]

you do know that urchins aren't exactly reef safe right?

[rayjay]

Clean up crew is not needed if you find and fix the problem causing the algae to grow.