clean up crew?

[Austan]

so what kind of clean up crew would you recomend for a 20g tall tank? it has 21lbs of lr and a 3" sand bed. im starting to see some brown alge on the lr.

[rljlll]

i wouls go with a few black turbos or astrea tha margaritas are ok too i think the black turbos are the best but thay are hard to find i got mine from martins they had to special order them

the black turbos are good because they eat a lot but are not as big as the mexican turbos so they dont knock things over

[Austan]

a few as in 3-4?

[Bebo77]

i like astrea's for algea... i would get 20 of those and 10 blue leg and 10 cerths...

[grenaria]

In my 25g tank I slowly added snails over the course of about 9 months until I found the balance. The balance I wanted is for most, but not all, of the algae on the glass to be gone every day. That is the only way I know of to be able to determine if there is enough food for everyone. I never lost a snail, other than shortly after acclimation.

In the end I had 4 Nassarius vibex, 5 nerites, 4 Tectus spp., 7 cerith spp., and some other hitchhikers (Collinista and Stomatella, populations wax and wane).

That wasn't the end of the clean up crew of course, there were also hundreds of bristleworms, hundreds of brittlestars, uncountable pods, and many worms of all sizes. I also had a large peppermint shrimp for aiptasia, I got lucky, he is very effective.

Nassarius: The only whelks that are obligate scavengers. All others, including similar looking ones might be scavengers, but they are also predators.

Tectus: You won't find this name in any stores. They are always mislabeled. They are able to right themselves and eat lots of diatoms and microalgae.

Nerites: Most species are very good eaters of adherent microalgae. I have seen some inappropriate intertidal species in local stores, you can sometimes tell as some will be well above the water line, or even on the outside of the tank.

Cerith: Detrivores, bactervores, algavores, sand cleaners. Once you put them in your tank you won't see them again, except for once a blue moon.

[Austan]

right on thank you for the info

[grenaria]

I wouldn't go with the hermits. They are all purely opportunistic omnivores, as are all crabs/decapods. They will make the top of your sand look good, but in reality they will be decimating your pod populations and eating your snails. This is a ticking time bomb in a nano tank IMHO. Reef hermit population densities are very very sparse, I have read that their numbers anywhere from 1 per 1m^3 to 1 per 10m^3 of substrate.

Astreas are too hard to identify, most have trouble righting themselves and will die if not baby sat.

I like turbos, but they are also often misidentified in stores, and are in general too large for nano tanks.

Margarita snails are temperate animals. Placing a temperate animal in a reef is like living in Phoenix for the Summer and vacationing in the Australian outback in Winter (Summer there). They will slowly cook, and their lives will be greatly shortened. These animals live 100+ years in their native habitats.

[army67romeo]

hey i have hermits and snail right now i am truing to get rid of of stocked 50cents each