clean up crew requirements

[dunl]

I have a 54 gallon bowfront, and I'm looking for suggestions on what and how many clean up crew I should have.

Currently in the tank I have a yellow tang, 8 small green chromis, mandarin goby, lawnmower blenny, 1 cleaner shimp, 1 small crocea clam, 8 algae eating hermits from Big Al's in Calgary (not blue or scarlet legged, so no idea what kind these are), and 5 turbo snails. Also have a hammerhead coral and 3 purplish mushrooms.

I'm open to swapping current inhabitants if it seems necessary.

Thanks,
Dunl

[demon666]

check j&l website they have requirements for cleanup crew for specific tank sizes



shawn

[dunl]

I saw that, but I thought I read 1 hermit crab for every gallon. Can that be right, 54 hermits for this tank?

[vanreefer]

Just remember most crabs are opurtunistic scavangers...ie if there is no food it will eat anything else.. most of my hemits have developed a taste for snailmeat... In my new 120 I will go with lots of snails like 60 and any crab that survives the change over ( 4-5days of rock cooking) which should be all 10 of them will be left in the tank as well... this is just my opinion that snails are better than crabs and will not prove to be as much a nuissance. others will argue the opposite

[demon666]

but you see hermits will eat all the leftover food that is not eaten by the fish or any decaying matter. where as snails mainly eat alge......... both are benificial.imo

[BT05]

You might want to check on those hermits you have right now. Not all are bad, but certain species get really large and may end up going after fish. Make sure you have plenty of shells for them to swap or they'll end up fighting each other.

If they turn out to be good hermits, then I'd say that your clean up crew is just fine right now but you might want some more diggers like cerith or nassarius snails.

There's no real set formula for a clean up crew, but it's better to have a good mix than 10000000 of the same snail/hermit. I also think the 1 hermit/gallon thing is quite excessive - more like 1 hermit/5-10 gallons. I have about 1 hermit per 10 gallons in my tank and never have problems with them.

Also, don't forget about sea hares, cowries, abalones, urchins, brittle stars etc. if you really want to go nuts. I'd be careful about brittle stars though, mine ended up snacking on the occasional hermit so I banished him to the sump. He's just gotten too big... like 9" across big.

[dunl]

Well, a bag of shells from Michael's craft store outfitted one of my hermits with new digs on the first day (thought I had a dead hermit until I spied a nice, new, white shiny shell zipping along....), so hopefully there won't be any cannabilism going on there.

As for brittle stars, I forgot to mention that I have two of them. I'm liking the job that the turbos, hermits, and stars are doing so far, but I have a sahllow white sand bed, and I'd really like to get that stirred constantly if possible to keep it white instead of greenish, brownish, left-over-algae-colored.

[mr_alberta]

If you want sand bed stirrers, get Cerith or Nassisarus snails. For your glass and rocks, get Astrea or Stomatella snails. Nerites are good too as they stay small and can get everywhere.

You really don't need crabs. Any uneaten food will be taken care of by the snails/worms/pods/stars/fish in your tank. Not all snails only eat algae either.

Usually they recommend 1 Snail/2 gallons.

[Mike Olson]

I bought a reef cleanup crew from JL when I first setup my 72Gallon...I went one package smaller than they suggested and then picked up a brittle star, an emerald crab, and a blue electric hermit....The emerald ate up my bubble algae leftover from the rock curing, and everyone else took care of the rest. I never had an algae problem thereafter, and the brittle did an amazing job with the the sand (as well as the nassarius snails I had)