Let's talk about cleaning crews

[Railskinner]

After all the reading that i done , concerning startup of a new system in regards to cleanup crews, i thought cleanup crews were necessary. But are they really necessary? hmmm. Reading thru these threads or post's that u guys have written seems like u don't really need them.Maybe we should have a snail race , turbo's only and watch r-s-car go. Winner takes all . mmm mmm good. ESCARGO's

[Canadbis]

sofar the people discussing this thread say no to cleanup crew. Does that mean that you dont use even cleaner shrimp?

[Delphinus]

Cleaner shrimp are ornamentals -- ie. there's no way you could consider those as "cleanup crew". They may jump on fish and clean out their scales or whatever, picking at parasites but even as such they would not be a substitute for proper husbandry -- it's just cool to watch.

I think that some cleanup crew serves a purpose. However it is entirely possible that the recommendations are seriously overkill. I.e., you may not need 40 or 50 snails, if you overpopulate eventually they will starve anyhow, and then you have all these empty snail shells littering the place.

In new tanks though it seems common to get a bad hair algae outbreak and if nothing eats that then it can be hard to get over. The only problem is that whatever eats that, will run out of food when it's gone, and may need to be fed. Things like sea hares are awesome for cleaning out a bad outbreak but then it's a crapshoot as to whether they'll adapt to being fed manually, or just starve out.

[Canadbis]

Thanks Tony
That clears things up a bit.
I had read that there should be 1 snail for every 2 Gallons?
what does everyone think about that.

[TheReefGeek]

I think the recommendations for cleaner crew are WAY over stated.

I don't think hermits do anything for keeping my tank clean, but I will always have some because they are so much fun to watch, and people who see my tank for the first time just love watching the shells crawl around. I definately lose some snails to them, but oh well.

Snails definately help clean the tank, but noticable to me, only slime algae, which I have very little of because of my UV. But I do like the look of snails climbing on the front glass, so I will always keep a few.

But when it comes to sandbed, you need something to keep it sifted and clean. This could come from snails, but it can also come from sand sifting gobies.

So my cleaner crew is small, and is just to add diversity to the tank. I like to add anything to my tank that helps maintain a balanced ecossytem, and im sure they do deal with detrius and such, I wouldn't know unless I got rid of them.

Definately having a bare bottom tank would make a difference in "requiring" a cleaner crew or not, because with bare bottom you can easily keep detris under control yourself, with high enough flow and some mechanical filtration nothing will be able to settle and rot.

Hope that helps.

[albert_dao]

Originally Posted by Canadbis

Thanks Tony
That clears things up a bit.
I had read that there should be 1 snail for every 2 Gallons?
what does everyone think about that.

That's BS. More like one snail for every 10-15 gallons, pending on the severity of your algae problem. Truth be told though, you're probably better off getting a good magnet cleaner...

Edit: my personal feelings on this are that cleaning crew stocking recommendations are the biggest scam in livestock. I can't think of a single case where such a high density maintains itself past the first four weeks.

[TheReefGeek]

And much cheaper to buy a sea hare that will mow down all your algae in no time if you need it done.

[Canadbis]

Great discusion Albert!
SO...if you WERE going to put a cleaning crew in (whether you feel you should or not)
What would be the best suggestions then
Lets say 33G setup.
48lbs Live rock,yada, yada

[TheReefGeek]

I would throw in 10 snails, and 3 hermits.

[G1GY]

I realy like the look of Hermit crabs................. In someone else's reef.

I've had a few and reallized in a matter of hours that they are little reef terrorists with an agenda to wage war on me!

One Emerald crab and a few hitchhiker filter feeding crabs, but other than that only snails for me.