Let's talk about cleaning crews

[albert_dao]

Originally Posted by StirCrazy

how often are you doing water changes and how much, what lighting is on the tank, how often do you vaccume your sand and clean the glass, and so on and so on. all this stuff plays a part in how effective a cleaning crew will be and weather one will even be needed.

Steve

The truth? There's two XM 10k's and a single XM 20k, all in 150 watt flavors; these are supported by two 65 watt actinics and two 65 watt 50/50's. Weekly 5 gallon water changes and a magnet every three to five days.

Originally Posted by TheReefGeek

That number of fish in a 150 is not a problem IMO, but you should upgrade your skimmer, and look into adding a fuge and/or UV.

Since adding my fuge, upgrading my skimmer, and adding a UV sterilizer my tank has almost no slime aglae growth on the glass at all, I haven't used my magnet in a long while. In fact my coralline algae growth is more substantial than my green slime on my front glass.

I added these at different times. My skimmer upgrade improved my water quality to allow me to have LPS and SPS successfully, but my softies growth slowed down substantially.

My fuge with various macro algae has out-competed my hair algae in the display with is great.

My UV has cleared up my green slime amazingly well.

I've never had problems with algae or nutrients. SPS grow very well (it's the store frag tank) and the water has amazing clarity.

I've considered throwing in a different skimmer since we have all these, now unsellable, Euroreef CS series skimmers lying around, but it'll have to wait until I figure out how much room I have left in the sump once the Zeovit reactor gets in there.

Anyway, I'll let a couple pictures do all the talking:



Tank as of two weeks ago.



Tank roughly six months prior (well before I started dosing Zeovit products).

Geez, comparing the two, it becomes painfully obvious how terrible the Coralife 10k 150 watt bulbs are.

[albert_dao]

In anycase, don't get me wrong, I see a place for cleaning crews in the hobby. Unfortunately, it's usually in tanks that have been set up poorly or cycling. Mature, well set up tanks rarely need inverts crawling around to keep things in clean shape.

[andrewsk]

Albert,

What is the Background color you use on that tank. I like it a lot. I was trying to decide between Black and Blue but the other Blues I have seen are to dark. This is still blue, but gives more of the illusion of depth than the darker ones.

Thanks

[albert_dao]

It's pure white. Much better than blue or black, IMO. Makes the tank look super bright and, according to guys on RC, is better at reflecting light than tinfoil.

[TheReefGeek]

Pure white, interesting idea.

What bulbs are the new picture taken under?

[albert_dao]

Two XM 10k's and one XM 20k. They're pretty appealing to look at, but I suspect I'd much rather have had the Pheonix 14k's.

Go Pheonix for being ever so descriptive with their bulb packaging...

[TheReefGeek]

I run XM 20Ks and love em. Much of a price difference to the Phoenix in the same watts?

[albert_dao]

I dunno, I sell them all for the same price. I suspect the price difference in wholesale is nickels and dimes.

See, the thing is, I had the bulbs there for that tank, but I didn't know which bulb was which. All these stupid metal halide bulbs come in the same generic white cardboard box with only serial numbers. That said, I went with the XM's since I could readily ID the kelvin temperature.





ANYWAY, let's not get sidetracked. I have a more objective question:

We've established that cleaning crews are, more or less, an optional part of a well planned set up. That in mind, what species does everyone have the best success with? How about total failures?

Here's a few of mine:

Good - Trochus snails, Cerith snails, and small conches.

Medium - most non-predatory brittle stars, sea hares.

Terrible - Astrea, Turbo, ALL HERMIT CRABS...