Cuc

I hear that sometimes. Not sure how you arrived at the conclusion that the CuC own dietary needs and the fact that they are living are not taken into account in the equation that reefcleaners uses. (not that he has a literal equation, I have no idea). I'd venture to say it's probably the most important details in the evaluation/recommendation!

Several years ago when I was setting up everyone said I was going to have "mass die off" w/my "large" CuC. Never happened. IME, a lot of folks seem to be under the impression that snails and crabs require copious amounts of food to survive and I guess thrive. As an example, I have a blue hermit and a particularly annoying nerite live in my HOB skimmer for over two years so far...

Back when I ran a pod farm (in a bucket) I kept a single hermit crab in there to eat up the extra food bc it accumulates too much. It couldn't even keep up and that was a tiny job.

Snails are tiny, they need milligrams of algae. Not tons ya know.

Having said that, I think algae availability is irrelevant to one aspect. Hermits eat snails (and take food from corals). Period. I'm not a fan of hermits.

 

I hope you're right... that would make one I know that may use common sense. Most online outlets I visit list their cleaner packs based on tank size alone, and personally, I find the number of critters astronomical. Furthermore, while the LFSes in my area don't actually sell "cleaner packs", they do price individual items by the dozen and recommend extreme numbers per gallon.

It's for certain that each snail or whatever is quite small and can survive on milligrams of food, but again, IMHO, 175 snails and 35 hermits will need far more than a small patch of diatoms (an aquarist's "ton"?).

 

your avatar is still freaking me out Peredhil......

 

Well, I'll see if I have a big cuc die off. I just bought:
100 Dwarf Cerith
30 Florida Cerith
37 Nassarius Vibex
40 Nerite Snails
I got reef cleaners custom cuc recommendation then altered it by comparing it to the complete cuc they listed for my tall 150 tank. I removed the hermits as I had free shipping without them and will buy 24 more from my lfs to bring me to a total of ~35 hermits.
Should I hold off on the hermits? Hmmm how to tell they'd benefit me?

 

hermits have pros and cons. I am by no means an expert, so this list may be incomplete or not accurate, but this is what i think of them.

pros: good scavengers, will eat pretty much anything, pick at algae, don't eat coral, very entertaining to watch 'scurry' around, colorful(i especially like scarlets and electric blue stripe)

cons: can kill snails (to minimize this make sure you have plenty of empty shells in your tank, but it will happen to some extent), knock over loose frags, need a variety of shells to grow into, can aggravate corals (they dont eat them but they will walk on them and/or steal food from them)

All this said, I have hermits because i really enjoy watching them. They are pretty funny to watch scurry around and add constant activity to the tank. It is annoying that all my frags have to be very secure or they will knock them off into the sand. They have eaten a few snails here and there but oh well.

 

I agree with Annie too.

Yeah, no argument there. I don't like most of these CuCs retailers for similar reason. It's one size fits all mentality - sell sell sell. Reefcleaners goes about it differently. They have a whole survey you fill out (includes tank size, but a lot of other things too) and John puts in a lot of effort to customize based on your current conditions. He usually follows up surveys w/questions too. I know John has not sold me things plenty of times bc my tank wasn't ready according to him. I've learned to trust his judgement on such matters. I really do recommend reefcleaners over the others.

I was just teasing on my 'ton' comment I knew what you meant ;D

Keep in mind, I'm one of those folks that only does maybe 4 WC a year. Part of that is keeping my nitrates/phosphates at or near 0 w/o WC. Part of being able to do that is w/a "large" CuC.

If you compare the surface area of any one of our tanks against a comparable surface area on a natural reef, the amount of CuC in our tanks is miniscule and why I stress it as part of my argument that weekly WC is a band-aid (in terms of nutrient export).

(that's the "stare" smiley, not mean face smiley lol)

 

uh oh now the stare emoticon is freaking me out! j/k glad you clarified