This question come to mine mind for a long time.. how the Clean up Crew actually work? They suppose to eat garbage, left over food and fish poo from your tank right..then they Poo back to the tank. They won't eat or touch their own Poo.. who will clean up their Poo? Fish or other invert wont touch it.???

BACTERIA!!!!!:mrgreen: and your skimmer

hmm Unless the Poo can dissolved into the water.. if not the skimmer wont help. Anyone witness bacteria eating this thing? Something worth to study.....:surprise:

I only need 1 clean up crew for Algae and Caroline .. my short spine Urchin.. he clean it up very good and my Huge LR bleach out by him by one night and he keep glinding on the rock and the Poo keep dropping like Sesame seed .. he can go non-stop.. More Purple-up to get Algae/Caroline back for him to munch on it.... he is cool little guy.

As far as I can understand, skimmers take the undissolved waste and take it out of your tank. They do so by attaching it to the minute bubbles in your skimmer and then gets collected into the collection cup. that is why there is such an odour to skimmers.
basically it is a cup of poop.
all the bacteria does is eat the ammonia and nitrites caused by the breakdown of the material before it gets removed.
this is as far as I understand it.
I have been known to be wrong though.

I personally don't think the the one per gallon is required.
However, IMO, a tank can sustain that ratio, it just isn't required.
I, at times, have that ratio plus much much more.
I then supplement the inverts diet by dried algae.
Neal

from what I've seen, the poo comes out in a runny cloud....at least I think it's poo.

After few minutes of investigation and study, found out the final clean up crew will be the reefer him/herself. He/she get to smell all those Poos, brush it off the skimmer cup and yikessss.. first time doing job might be puking :( ..

I think that you are better off vacuuming your substrate with a siphon every water change rather than trying to buck up for a massive cleanup crew that, itself, adds to the tank's bioload.