Let's talk about cleaning crews

Delphinus · #1 06-13-2006, 08:49 PM

Whatever would people mount frags on though without dead snail shells???

Actually .... in all seriousness .... friends don't let friends glue frags to snail shells!! Isn't a snail's death sad enough as it is? We don't need to make it a tragedy as well.

Canadbis · #2 06-13-2006, 09:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Delphinus

Whatever would people mount frags on though without dead snail shells???

Actually .... in all seriousness .... friends don't let friends glue frags to snail shells!! Isn't a snail's death sad enough as it is? We don't need to make it a tragedy as well.

Guess I will pull it off then...
JK
It wouldn't stay anyhow.

Funky_Fish14 · #3 06-13-2006, 10:51 PM

Too true, hermits just knock things over too... nice SPS being one of them!

Railskinner · #4 06-14-2006, 05:52 AM

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 · #5 06-14-2006, 03:04 PM

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

Delphinus · #6 06-14-2006, 04:31 PM

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 · #7 06-14-2006, 05:29 PM

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.