best cleaner crew package?

howdy all, i'm starting to look at some cleaner crews or reef janitors, whatever you wanna call them.. i'm just wondering, what's the best one? i've got a 55gal, and i've been looking at all the "complete" packages, like from liveaquaria, saltwaterfish, marinedepotlive, etc. etc... i want more than just hermits and snails, but everything else just seems hard as crud to keep alive... for example, marinedepotlive has a 50gal kit, and some of the questionables that it has are 2 queen conches, a sand sifting star, and a serpent seastar... each of those gets HUGE at around 12 inches, way too big for my 55gal... i mean, the serpent star might be able to work out because they just stay under a rock and feed off of whatever they can reach, right? for any kind of snails or "shelled" inverts, because of the way my LR is setup, they can't get more than say, 4 inches, and even then, they wouldn't be able to move but through a quarter of my tank... i'm fine with snails and crabs, but i'd like more, like a coral banded and/or a couple of cleaner shrimp, a mythrax crab (to get rid of the bubble algae that i have)... so should i just get the cleaner crew from liveaquaria, that just has like, trochus, astrea, nassarius snails, and some hermit crabs, and then add a shrimp or emerald separately? oh, and saltwaterfish has another seemingly good package, but some of the animals in it, i've heard that its just plain hard to keep them alive, or you can get them from a grocery store! (the cleaner clam)....

OOOOORRRRRRR, would it just be better to buy each kind separately, like buy 10 astrea snails, 10 trochus, 10 hermits, etc. etc.... if so, how many of what kinds?

oh, on a side note, i've got 2 hermit crabs that came as hitchhikers... its kind of weird because one of them i can pretty much find any day of the week, but the other one i can only find once in a blue moon... i keep thinking that he's died, but then he'll pop up out of nowhere!!

 

I've bought from Geothermal Aquaculture Research Foundation Home Page. They make the package up depending on the type of algae you have. It's usually a mix of different snails & come crabs. They through in some of their Garf Grunge which has all sorts of incredible things for your sand bed. With Garf you'll pay about a $1/gal.

 

Personally, I would buy your crew individually. Get only the things you want and in the quantities you want. What's the problem with your tank? What has to be cleaned up?

I also would start light on the inverts. You can always add more. However if you stock too heavy and they run out of food it will be a pita to target feed and if you don't, they'll start dieing off.

One queen conch is unsuitable for a 55 nevermind two. They get huge. An alternative would be a fighting conch or a tongan conch. And even then, only one.

A sand sifting star is out of the question if your goal is to have a sand bed with any life in it. If that's not what you wanted for your sand bed, go for it. However they are voracious eaters and would probably strip a sand bed in a 55 clean in no time, then starve and die. If you want some sand cleaned up try a single cucumber. If you want it just constantly shifted, try a group of nassarius. For a stunning look and more effective stirring, try a group of tongan nassarius.

The serpent star is no problem with regards to size. I have one in a 20long that almost stretches to touch each side of the tank at the same time. They are easy to feed and while some do get big, their mass isn't.

Good luck

 

well, i'm still suffering from the diatom bloom, and will probably have another one since i'm having another cycle... last night, i took my scrubbing pad, and got most of it off of the front panel (you almost couldn't see through it it was so bad).... so brown algae that's pretty easy to scrub/scrape off of the glass, little spots of red, starting to get a little hair algae here and there... oh, and the bubble algae.... as far as the sandbed, i may have a problem with having anything in there.. its very shallow, just barely enough to come over the black part on the bottom of the glass (part of the frame or something..).. i'd say its an inch and a half deep...i would add more, but that would mean pulling out all of my LR so i could pour it out evenly... unless i very carefully/slowly poured in, like one cup at a time, and poured it around the liverock... which would basically mean the front half of my aquarium... if i did let it pile up towards the front or whatever, would the "sandsifters" eventually spread it out to make it more or less even? i'm kind of at the point of "leave it as it is or remove all the LR and add more sand, and re-aquascape everything".

 

The sand bed wouldn't be a problem for nassarius and conch. I have about that much in the tanks I keep them in.

If you wanted to add more sand you can use a nice fat piece of PVC pipe and pour the sand down through that to keep the cloud localized and also be able to direct the sand where you want it to go without getting wet. If you didn't move the pipe out right away you could stick a siphon in there and suck out the water in there which would be cloudy. Make for a nice water change at the same time.

If your tank is cycling still I wouldn't add any clean up crew items just yet. Yes they are hardy, but they're not indestructible and will suffer from bad water quality just like any other living thing would.

 

yeah, i'm not getting them right away... i just know that i'm about ready, and am doing "window shopping" at the moment... from the time that i started planning for a SW tank, i could have filled a 5-chapter notebook on anything related to them... what fish i want to buy, what reef packages, what corals, lights, skimmers, filters, sumps, ANYTHING..... but i threw that all away, because from the time that i started to now, everything has changed except for the tank itself...lol

 

er maybe no hermits

HI,
maybe its me, but Ive seen alot of problems with hermits the red ones kill the little blue ones, And then each other, I really lile the little green crabs and a few peppermint shrimp and little snails a skunk shrimp helps too. be sure they tolerate warm water, many of the ones on ebay will burn out if put in warm water above 70 deg. Ask if they are warm water snails.
They forget to tell you that.
I love the LM bleeny they are great cleaners if you have a algae problem most people do.
Good Luck.
Doug

 

oh, i just thought of another potential problem... in the month that i couldn't care for the aquarium, something wiped out my population of bristleworms and amphipods (and i don't think i ever had copepods in the first place)... should i try to repopulate them before putting anything else in there? another question, is how, without having to buy another big chunk of LR? i've found bottled copepods on liveaquaria, but 25 bucks for a 4oz bottle... a little much if you ask me... anyway, this would be a good time for those "helpful freebies that would help me get back on track!" hint hint... i've heard of people giving away bristleworms, just because their tank was overpopulated... actually, do i even need them in the first place? i know a lot of people say they're purely beneficial, as long as they don't get too big, but i think they look ugly, and useless... so if they're not a necessity, then i won't worry about them...

 

You're going to get copepods and bristleworms regardless if you want them or not as long as you are stocking your tank. If you want a jump start, get a small piece of rock or a little bit of sand from another reefers established tank. Bristleworms are definitely not useless. They are great clean up critters. Also, everything in the ocean couldn't get the looks. Some things just have to make do.

 

true, that bristleworms may be good cleanup critters, but aren't hermit crabs and snails and shrimp and everything else? i'm not saying that you're wrong or anything, its just that IMO, bristleworms seem more of an eyesore... maybe i just have such a problem with them, because i don't have anything else in there right now... and when i'm studying every nook and cranny of liverock, the bristleworms seem to stand out more than anything... or DID anyway, but now that they're gone, all i've got to look at is 3 tiny featherdusters, 2 hermit crabs (one of which i can only find most of the time), and my peanutworm... that's it as far as hitchhikers... then add my 2 tiny tiny mollies... maybe since i got my new T5 HO's, then more goodies will start growing and show up while my tank is cycling again... all's i'm saying is that once i can get some real fish, then me worrying about worms and pods will go away... maybe i can try GARF, to see if they can send me a free sample of their garf grunge...