Most Important task to a healthy tank?

[jjschwi]

Would you say that the most important thing that keeps everyones tanks looking there best would be attributed to weekley water changes?

Also if a person is not keeping SPS but mostly softies in the tank, how important is it that I dose all kinds of supplements like calcium, magnesium. If you are doing weekly water changes and only keep softies, do you still suplement?

Also, should I be vaccuming my 2" sand bed? like you do in freshwater tanks?

[Lpabsolute]

I would say that the two most important things for a tank looking good would be both the water changes and your cleanup crew.

[jjschwi]

is it true that I am supposed to have 1 snail per gallon of water?
and 1 hermit crab per gallon? In the past my dumb hermit crabs would eat some of my snails, is that normal? I had other shells in the tank, Im not sure if they were just starving or what?
but is it true 1 snail and 1 crab per gallon?

[Lpabsolute]

Not sure about the snail/crab per gallon thing. I've only got about 15 snails/15 blue hermits for my 54g and they do the job. Hermits will take shells if they wont them bad enough, but usually won't mess with the snails unless they are dead, or so i've heard.

[Lpabsolute]

I would try placing the snails and crabs on different places on your LiveRock. And be sure to flip over any snails that might be upside down and unable to turn themselves over. This would prob. attract your hermits for an easy meal.

[jjschwi]

yeah, thats what I have been doing, but I feel like I have to add snails like every 6 months to replenish the ones fallen to prey becuase of the hermits.

If you see a rather large hermit that has been with your tank for a while and has gotten big, should he be removed? is it desirable to have larger hermits?

[davidryder]

i think my cleaner shrimp is murdering my hermits :-(

[Lyscer]

I would suggest trying something like stomatella snails. When I first set my tank up about 3 months ago I only had about 20 snails(Turbo, astrais, and bumble bee) I got a piece of live rock with stomatella and they have multiplied like crazy in my tank. Last week I counted 52 of them and they seem to do a very good job of cleaning out the inside of my overflows because they are small enough to fit in them. They also get into holes in my live rock and clean them out. I have noticed also that the stomatellas have slowly taken over and pretty much all of my turbos have died off but the stomatella population keeps increasing to suppliment for the loss of my turbos. This is how it seems not quite sure if it is how it is though.

[rustybucket145]

I have about 1.5 'janitors' per gallon on my system. I feel that it is important to have several different breeds of both snails and hermits. Each species eats slightly different things. Yes your hermits will occassionally ambush a snail. It's nature in a glass box, murder will happen no matter what you do. My hermits go nuts when I drop a cube of Spirulina (sp.) in the bottom of the tank. In the past I have removed 'problem hermits' from my system. Some of them had just gotten to big and were destroying habitat. I took them to the LFS and traded them for baby hermit crabs. They were happy and so was I. I try to pick-up a few snails/ hermits each time I go the the LFS to replace those who have gone to the ocean in the sky.

[Alaskan Reefer]

A 2" sand bed should probably be vacuumed, unless it's a very fine grain like Southdown. A very fine sand at that depth could have anaerobic zones, and you wouldn't want to disturb them.

Supplementation is pretty pointless on a softy tank, especially if you're doing regular water changes -- that's all you need. You should never supplement anything you can't test for -- especially things like calcium and magnesium which can have a profound effect on your alkalinity and maybe even pH if you do it wrong.

The most important task, IMO, for a healthy looking tank is having as much flow (preferrably random) in the tank as your livestock can handle. Good flow maximizes effectiveness of LR, maximizes effectiveness of the skimmer, and makes it difficult for algae to take root anywhere.

Clean up crew opinions vary wildly. It's important to realize that any janitor will eat something, but then release detritus of their own -- albeit less. Snails eat algae, go doo doo, and algae utilizes the doo doo to grow again -- the net effect is just whatever energy the snail used to move around. For me, I like a small clean up crew.

I think hermits are a waste of money -- in exchange for a critter that basically eats extra food or dead fish you get snail killing. Yes, they will kill live snails for their shells, especially cerith snails -- assumedly because cerith shells are perfect for hermit bodies. Some scarlet hermits will eat hair algae, but beyond that you don't need hermits if you don't overfeed and you get dead fish out of the tank. You have to have some sort of snail to deal with film algae on the glass, and large mexican turbos or astreas. It's also good to have some sort of sand sifter / detritus eater -- and ceriths do both. It's also good to have shrimp of some sort, and if you have aiptasia peppermints are the ticket, if you don't than cleaners so you can get the added benefit of fish parasite removal.

I have a 125, 32X tank turnover (pretty strong for a mixed reef with sand), and my cleanup crew is 6 Mexican Turbos, 3 Scarlet Hermits, 12 Ceriths, 4 Peppermint Shrimp, and 2 Cleaner Shrimp.

If you have enough flow, you just don't need all those janitors...

[Alaskan Reefer]

Should have mentioned two more things -- stomatella snails will probably breed in your tank no matter what you do. They do a good job of cleaning for how small they are, but they also clog small holes in anything you have (spray bars comes to mind). I used to let them multiply at will (literally thousands in my 75 gallon), and now I remove as many as I can see once per week.

Finally, in addition to good flow, a top notch skimmer and / or a refugium with macroalgae is just as important to tank beauty.

[cwegescheide]

I think that depending on how much algae problem you have will determine how much of a cleanup crew you need. Flow is important but not a critical as an SPS tank. FWIW I've got a few softies in my SPS tank and the flow does not really agree with them. How do I know? One of my Tunze's crapped out on me a while back so only 1 was working. A lot less flow. My softies looked MUCH happier with a little less flow. Could have been a coincedence but...

[Alaskan Reefer]

Not a coincedence that softies wouldn't enjoy Tunze caliber flow -- that's why I went with "as much flow as your livestock can handle" instead of "as much flow as you can put in the tank." Softies aren't going to like Tunzes, but you can do a lot better than just a single Maxijet, even in a softy only tank.

You have to place softies very carefully in a Tunze equipped tank. Took me about a dozen tries to get them all placed in the few "low" flow areas of the tank, but eventually they all found good homes where they're growing.

[mr pink floyd]

if you have sand, lots of snails and crabs to stir it up and clean it out

[sterbrock1]

Not dumping every supplement in your tank cause some one says its good.

Water changes.

I was told early on less is better. It took me a while to heed that advice, but it really works. I add no supplements. I do regular water changes with IO and R/O water. I have a 100 gallon softies tank and it thrives. I also have only 3 fish and they are pretty much on their own. I feed them maybe once a month. I'm sure they get some shrimp and things from the refugium I have with macro algae. I have virtually no clean up crew. Maybe one or two turbo snails. I have these small starfish that multiply in my tank about the diameter of a pencil eraiser. Thats about it.

[Eugene Ciccimaro]

for an established tank I would say ca++ levels/pH

[zatlinrf]

Don't forget to avoid overfeeding

[mike89t]

I think the most important thing for a reef tank is to keep your water parameters close to the ranges listed in this article:

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-05/rhf/index.php

[boxfishpooalot]

suck out dirt, suck out more dirt, and suck out the dirt.=clean water

You would be surprised at how much dirt comes out from live rock when you switch to a bare bottom tank!

[boxfishpooalot]

but you would also be surprised at how hard it is to keep it clean. Wich relates to nitrates. I have sand now.

[MiddletonMark]

The most important thing IMO is between two things:
--dedicated husbandry to tank [regular w/c, water testing, etc]
--self control. [avoiding overstocking fish, bringing home incompatible livestock, taking stocking slowly + building the tank for the future]

[davocean]

Most important is just what you did.
Research and ask questions from as many experienced people as possible b4 doing anything.
Next is regular maint/water change/ and lots of observation.
No more hermits in my tank
LOTS OF SNAILS
Good circulation and skimming is huge