Purpose of Hermit Crab

[troni]

ok so while your tank was maturing what did you use?

[jorjef]

Originally Posted by troni

ok so while your tank was maturing what did you use?

I fell into assumption I "needed" a clean up crew when I started.. Ended up I didn't need anything. I only had a mediocre diatom bloom that I blew off with a turkey baster and netted up with a cheese cloth type of net. After a week or so it went away. Wait for a problem to arrive before you jump into buying anything. To answer your question I had the most evil of all "HERMIT" crabs and Astrea snails. Get good quality cured live rock and your chances of needing anything will be greatly reduced.

[whatcaneyedo]

When I first started up I followed the usual recommendations and added many different snails and crabs. But not because they were needed. Only because thats what I thought I was suppose to do. In general most of them didn't last long. The crabs would kill each other and some of the snails or get eaten themselves by my fish. The snails would get stuck in the rocks or fall upside down and die or just plain starve if I bought the wrong type. More and more I witnessed a hitch hiker cleanup crew emerge so I started to question what was the point in buying all of these things? So I stopped and now the bristle worms, mini brittle stars, mini turbos, pods, mysids, astrea stars and stomatella snails do most of the work. Whats left of my store-bought crews consists of 2 abalone, an astrea snail, 1 tuxedo and 1 rock boring urchin. Thats it and if you look in my Tank Journal you'll see that I do have a relatively large system with a high bioload.