Keeping a aggressive tank clean

[corwise]

How's it going? After the complete tank loss due to the ice storm last month, I'm redoing my tank (with a new generator) as an agressive tank. Since I won't be able to put in crabs, small snails, shrimp, etc, I was wondering how you guys keep the tanks clean? My protein skimmer will be going full blast, but wondering if you just keep tossing in crabs knowing they'll be snacks sooner or later? Thanks.

Dave

[RayAllen]

In my tank I have 2 triggers and 3 wrasses and a moray. I could toss 50 hremits in and they would all be dead withing a couple of days. I just put 10 large turbo snails in the tank last week and am now down to 4 alive. With that said all the cleaning is done manually. I do have a chocalte chip star that actually eats some algae but my hands and skimmer do everything else. My 170lbs of Live rock also help a lot.

[limitedslip]

I use ozone as well, it helps alot, I actually have snails and hermits in my tank, with a parrotfish and 2 puffers (3 fish that would usually chomp them). I guess its just luck of the draw with that. Also, do frequent water changes (once every 1 to 2 weeks) and be sure to keep algae from growing on the glass with a magfloat or sumthing.

[justinpsmith]

I never had issues with inverts going missing until my fish got big. They don't seem as interested when they are young and that is why you hear a lot of people say it works for them to have crabs in the tank with aggressive fish. Long term, it really doesn't work often.

I would suggest running ozone in any heavily stocked aggressive tank. In fact I would never set up a tank again without ozone. Its nice to know that if something dies in your tank and you don't find it, you will not get any ammonia or nitrite spike while ozone is running. That of course is just one of the many many reasons to run ozone.