help/suggestions for clean up crew

[sowellj]

I have a 180 that is on the tail end of the cycle and I will be adding a clean up crew in the next couple of days. It seems to me that most of the packaged clean up crews are way overkill. Here is what I was thinking:

10 scarlet hermits
10 turbo snails
10 astrea snails
10 nassarius sanils
2 tonga fighting conchs

Thanks for the input/suggestions.

[Ritten]

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh....php?t=1776085

Reefcleaners.org will tell you exactly what you need based on your system, fish, sandbed, etc. I found them to recommend much less than the standard clean up crews for sale.

[Holyreefer]

man i have a 210 display and i put in 200 hermit crabs i know for sure its not enough. Some of them die off get eating by your fish.

[z34fiend]

I have about 30 hermit crabs in my 220 and they seem to do a good job in between my weekly cleanings. I also have 3 tangs which seems to help alot.

[Chris27]

Originally Posted by Holyreefer

man i have a 210 display and i put in 200 hermit crabs i know for sure its not enough. Some of them die off get eating by your fish.

I would agree, beefing up that list is probably a good idea. I have over 200 inverts roaming around my 180 right now. My rocks and sand are very clean, and I have never really noticed a die off, so I figure them to be well fed. I like to keep nice fat fish, and although my feeding habits don't allow for much food to hit the bottom, some still gets there, the hermits and nassarius jump on it like it's going out of style.

Here is a list I have found to work and why:

1. Nassarius snails - sandbed stirrer and cleaner
2. Cerith snails - sandbed and glass.
3. Trochus snails - awesome glass and rock cleaner, and they get downright huge.
4. Red Leg / Blue Leg / Scarlet Hermits - good generic rock / sand scavengers.
5. Zebra / Electric hermits - hair algae and really good at it, misc scavenging.
6. Cucumber - good sand cleaner and scavenger.
7. Conch - good sand stirrer, but you can't have too many.
8. Brittle Starfish - good for hard to reach spots in the rocks.
9. Sand Sifting star or horseshoe crab - great sand stirrers, but only in big tanks.
10. Shrimp - scavengers, fish cleaning, aiptasia, and really cool to look at, especially at night.
11. Urchins - great scavengers, but they can mow down coraline and knock rocks and corals around pretty well.

If you ever get a chance to dive on a reef in the pacific, take a look really close to the rocks, you'll see an invert every few inches...many folks claim we starve them to death in our tanks, but I feel that's really hard to do, especially in a balanced ecosystem. Bare bottom, low nutrient, and artificial decoration tanks are a bit different, so I understand that, but with a mini ocean and fat fish, I don't see how they starve.

Good Luck with the new tank - a 180 is a great size!

[sowellj]

Thanks for the suggestions. Seems like most people are in the 'add more camp'. Perhaps double what i have?