Cleanup crew recommendations?

[serisash]

I'm trying to deal with a red algae problem and as part of that, I've realized that the number of crabs and snails in my 125 gallon reef has been greatly diminished. I can easily find like 2 crabs now. So I'm thinking it's time to replenish my cleanup crabs 'n snails.

I've purchased them online from a number of sources, including purchasing the recommended critters from GARF at one time long ago. Since these forums are an eternal font of information, I was wondering if anyone here has recommendations for places to order cleanup crews from. Price is a big component for me, but so is getting the right kinds of cleanup animals. I see a lot of sites making claims about how "this crab eats this" and "this snail eats that", but it's not clear that these claims are universally accepted so I'm skeptical of relying on the claims of a particular vendor.

Also, what's the rule of thumb for number of critters for my 125 gallon tank? I think I've seen it mentioned in terms of pounds of live rock, but I really have no idea how much I have. I do have a 4-5" DSB and plenty of live rock, but not live rock stacked to the top of the tank or anything (I can see the back of the tank :-) ).

Thanks

Mark

[ciachef]

Mark,
How long has the tank been running? Is it possible you are going through the initial algae cycle? I would just wait it out rather than waste a bunch of money on a cleanup crew just to see it die. There are few things if any that are capable of ridding your tank of red algae. If your tank is already cycled then try and find the source of the problem and fix that first then worry about a cleaning crew. A lot of the cleanup crews out there are waaay too big for what they say they should be in. I have a couple of astrea snails and a handful of nassarius snails in my forty five that take care of everything. If I bought one of those kits I would have many many more and in my opinion far too many. Again try and find the problems source first though and get rid of the algae that way.

[cuongvynguyen]

Red cyanobacteria is an indication of water quality. I would get a iron based phosphate absorber such as phosban. The cleanup crew is not the answer to water quality issues.

[serisash]

I guess maybe I should have gone into more detail.

The tank is 10-12 months old. The red algae problem has steadily gotten worse over the last few months. I had been running without a skimmer (don't ask) and I got an MR-1 a few days ago. It's been churning out lots of stuff daily, but I see no indication that of the red algae receding.

The tank has definitely cycled. Ammonia, Nitrates and Nitrites all zero. My fish are (and have been) ridiculously healthy and growing. Corals seem fine. My zooanthids weren't really spreading much until I got the skimmer, now they are opening up more and spreading around so I'm sure that's a sign of something the skimmer's doing to improve the water. I would have thought if I had serious water quality problems, I would see fish getting sick/stressed/diseased, more corals not opening up, etc.

Am I not supposed to have a certain number of hermits and snails as part of "normal" tank maintenance? I mean, I'm mainly concerned about the lack of cleanup animals as a possible contributor to the problem, not so much the cause.

From what I've read, there are a LOT of possible causes of red algae. Lack of oxygen (I dont' believe that's the case, but I think the new skimmer will take care of that). Excess dissolved organics (again, I'm assuming that this will start going away as a possible problem the more the skimmer runs). I had understood that having herbivores available to remove what algae (red or otherwise) were also something you wanted to have on hand. Lack of water flow was another possible contributor. I played with the water flow and put some strong powerheads in the tank a few months ago and it has had no effect on the problem.

So at this point, I'm looking for things that I haven't covered and since I can actually spot about 2 hermits (blue legged) in the entire tank, I'm thinking that that might help.

I'm a little torn about the powercompacts. They're about 10-12 months old too. It's a Custom Sea Life hood and ballast. I could replace the bulbs or perhaps try to upgrade the hood to use T5's which in the long run might be more beneficial, but in the short term would be more expensive...

Anyway, I thought replenishing my cleanup crew would help.

Thanks

Mark

[serisash]

I should add, that I'd also understood that lack of animals in the sand bed can also be a cause of red algae. The sand bed was initially seeded with sand from IPSF last June. Thinking that this was my problem later, I bought more from IPSF and from Inland Aquatics maybe 6 months ago.

The red algae grows everywhere and grows so fast that it's really kind of amazing. It seems as if you can almost watch it grow. It seems to grow mostly over the sand bed. The sand bed does it's thing and releases gas that then come up under the sheet of cyano and eventually lifts it up. It does grown on the rocks as well, but not as much (or maybe as noticably) as the sandbed.

Not that this would be a complete solution, but at trying to combat this problem, I'd done at least a 50% water change to see what effect I'd see. At the same time I did as much manual removal as I possibly could. The very next day, it was all back in full force. Amazing.

I also use RO/DI water. Thinking that my filters were old, I'd replaced all 3 stages, plus membrane recently and did some water changes. No effect.

The last time I'd tested for phosphates (admittedly several months ago, but the problem was in full force them too), I got no detectable reading.

My sandbed is the minimum 4-5".

Mark

[serisash]

^poke...

[GARFVolunteer]

IME slime algae (cyanobacteria) outbreak is a direct result of nitrate build up even though the nitrate readings may be zero . There are thing like chemi-clean that will oxidize the slime and it will go away. Using chemicals is a way of treating the symptom and not the cause. Water changes will help some but I have found that adding more current and recharging the sand bed seem to work the best.

I use a plenum system and I decided to add some sugar sized sand to it. This plugged the plenum so it was not functioning properly. The nitrates kept building up until I had an algae outbreak like you are describing. It wasn't until I properly rebuilt the plenum's sand bed, that I got it back under control.

Hope this helps,

Scott