Anyone NOT use a clean up crew?

[holdthecoffee]

So I read a post about someone seeing baby vermetid snails under a microscope that looked clean with the naked eye. I'm currently quarantining a clean up crew from a popular online vendor here, and decided to look at a snail shell that had white speckle dots and sure enough it looks like it could be vermetid snails.

It seems like it's impossible to avoid vermetid snails if you add a clean up crew unless you looked at every snail under a microscope. I was wondering if anyone has gotten away with never having a clean up crew in their display tank.

 

[holdthecoffee]

500x zoom

 

[holdthecoffee]

Anyone?

 

[zalick]

I had a small CUC in my current system300g DT and never replaced the snails as they died. I'm a hard no for any crabs. So technically I ran for maybe 1.5- 2 years with no CUC. I'm currently QT 50 snails. The snails can get the algae off rocks that I can't. I had a bunch of algae on the stalks of a cluster of hammers. It was irritating them and to the point I could see it eventually smothering them. I moved the hammers (about 50 heads) to the QT with the snails and within a week they are squeaky clean.

 

[00W]

I have two tanks. One with and one without. The one without I use a yellow tang and coral beauty. If I had a clean up crew in there they would die of starvation or the angel or tang would surely eat them anyways.