Best live rock cleaners

[Tyler Flynn]

What are the best critters for keeping my live rock looking good? I have a 60 gallon, and an orange spotted blenny already. Looking at clean up crew more than fish

 

[TnFishwater98]

What are the best critters for keeping my live rock looking good? I have a 60 gallon, and an orange spotted blenny already. Looking at clean up crew more than fish

Reef Cleaners is a good site. I’ve got a order now with lots of inverts heading my way.

 

[<*]]]<]

Nassarius are good substrate cleaners to cope with overfeeding. Ceriths and Astreas are great generalist, eating a wide range of nuisance algae, especially among rockwork.

 

[damsels are not mean]

Astrea (ninja star if possible, much better long term survival rate), trochus, and turbo snails are best at eating the green film algae on surfaces. They really do leave it squeaky clean.

Diatoms: They generally wax and wane, especially in a new tank. I am not certain anything really eats them, but I have never seen them become a plague either. I think overreacting to them is probably a bigger issue. Sand stirrers help keep the sand clean and good ones (depending on tank size) are cucumbers, conchs, nassarius snails, and cerith snails. Sand sifting gobies and sand stars will help but at the expense of lots of microfauna that help process waste.

For hair algae the only consistent results seem to be from limpets, abalone (which get really big) and sea slugs like sea hares. Court jester gobies supposedly eat it but I haven't tested this or seen enough video evidence to confidently say this. I've seen them "eat" it but it seems they are just eating stuff that is in it. Tangs and foxface seem to keep it at bay but won't eat it when it becomes established. Urchins, like tangs, prefer it short but are also quite efficient grazers. Urchins can scratch acrylic and will eat the pretty coralline algae, too.

Cyano. I have not seen a cleaner that consistently eats cyano except court jester gobies, which can be hard to keep fed in captivity but are well documented cyano slurpers. Biota has captive ones that accept more foods.

Valonia/bubble algae is tough. I recommend just manually removing what you can. Emerald crabs are hit or miss and may do more damage than they do good by eating your corals and snails. Some reports of foxfaces eating small bubbles but unless it's been recorded in video format I won't recommend it.

Bryopsis is also tough. Sea slugs eat it and so do court jester gobies. Another situation where I haven't seen so much as a video of the goby eating it so I can't verify.

No matter what the fish store tells you, skip the hermits unless you just think they are cool and want them ornamentally. I love hermits so I always want to have a few, and when I do they are usually ones that don't want the sizes of shells I have on my snails. They are not great cleaners and are opportunistic. The little blue legs are snail serial killers. IME the best are the scarlet reef hermits. I have never seen them attack a snail and the shells they use are usually not like what is in our tanks. They also seem to get collected at a size where they don't change shells much and they live several years easily.

While I think herbivores are an important part of consistent algae control, I believe the best deterrent is coral cover. Algae will grow in any environment that coral will. So trying to make your tank inhospitable via water chemistry to one is going to just kill the other. By controlling the spread of algae either manually or with herbivores, you allow the system to become coral dominated, and the algae is less able to spread as it generally won't grow on coral flesh. I have a theory that corals and filter feeders also eat algae spores making it harder for it to spread but that is not really backed by solid research AFAIK.

And remember: If you can't find a video of a species eating a particular kind of algae, don't count on it.

 

[damsels are not mean]

Astrea (ninja star if possible, much better long term survival rate), trochus, and turbo snails are best at eating the green film algae on surfaces. They really do leave it squeaky clean.

Diatoms: They generally wax and wane, especially in a new tank. I am not certain anything really eats them, but I have never seen them become a plague either. I think overreacting to them is probably a bigger issue. Sand stirrers help keep the sand clean and good ones (depending on tank size) are cucumbers, conchs, nassarius snails, and cerith snails. Sand sifting gobies and sand stars will help but at the expense of lots of microfauna that help process waste.

For hair algae the only consistent results seem to be from limpets, abalone (which get really big) and sea slugs like sea hares. Court jester gobies supposedly eat it but I haven't tested this or seen enough video evidence to confidently say this. I've seen them "eat" it but it seems they are just eating stuff that is in it. Tangs and foxface seem to keep it at bay but won't eat it when it becomes established. Urchins, like tangs, prefer it short but are also quite efficient grazers. Urchins can scratch acrylic and will eat the pretty coralline algae, too.

Cyano. I have not seen a cleaner that consistently eats cyano except court jester gobies, which can be hard to keep fed in captivity but are well documented cyano slurpers. Biota has captive ones that accept more foods.

Valonia/bubble algae is tough. I recommend just manually removing what you can. Emerald crabs are hit or miss and may do more damage than they do good by eating your corals and snails. Some reports of foxfaces eating small bubbles but unless it's been recorded in video format I won't recommend it.

Bryopsis is also tough. Sea slugs eat it and so do court jester gobies. Another situation where I haven't seen so much as a video of the goby eating it so I can't verify.

No matter what the fish store tells you, skip the hermits unless you just think they are cool and want them ornamentally. I love hermits so I always want to have a few, and when I do they are usually ones that don't want the sizes of shells I have on my snails. They are not great cleaners and are opportunistic. The little blue legs are snail serial killers. IME the best are the scarlet reef hermits. I have never seen them attack a snail and the shells they use are usually not like what is in our tanks. They also seem to get collected at a size where they don't change shells much and they live several years easily.

While I think herbivores are an important part of consistent algae control, I believe the best deterrent is coral cover. Algae will grow in any environment that coral will. So trying to make your tank inhospitable via water chemistry to one is going to just kill the other. By controlling the spread of algae either manually or with herbivores, you allow the system to become coral dominated, and the algae is less able to spread as it generally won't grow on coral flesh. I have a theory that corals and filter feeders also eat algae spores making it harder for it to spread but that is not really backed by solid research AFAIK.

And remember: If you can't find a video of a species eating a particular kind of algae, don't count on it.

Forgot to mention blennies. Lawnmower and starry blennies will eat hair algae too. Other blennies might but if you want a cleaner these are more "purpose-built". They are not 100% reef safe, as many have reported nipping at fleshy LPS and clam mantles. I have personally never experienced this and I honestly think tangs are probably less reef safe than these guys.

 

[Dbichler]

Urchins

 

[Jekyl]

What are the best critters for keeping my live rock looking good? I have a 60 gallon, and an orange spotted blenny already. Looking at clean up crew more than fish

Reefcleaners.org and the the package for like the 32g

 

[VanDalsenReef]

Tangs

 

[VanDalsenReef]

Rabbit fish

 

[Jekyl]

Neither fit in a 60g

 

[PlumberDude]

I just got 512 snails from reef cleaners for my 250DD. My whole tank was covered in algae. Bare bottom too. They have almost polished up my whole tank within a couple weeks. Just some rock left for them to finish. They are even in the overflows on each side, I’m keeping an eye on them…

 

[VanDalsenReef]

Neither fit in a 60g

Small ones will. It's really okay and most smaller species take a while to get large anyway

 

[Sean_B]

Tail Spot Blenny for the rocks!

MiniStars from IPSF

 

[Intense37754]

Reef Cleaners is a good site. I’ve got a order now with lots of inverts heading my way.

Same here, ordered earlier today

Wanted to buy some limpets but they are all out, they clean rock very well and my triggers and puffer leave them alone. Very difficult to remove from any surface

 

[PeterEde]

What are the best critters for keeping my live rock looking good? I have a 60 gallon, and an orange spotted blenny already. Looking at clean up crew more than fish

My Foxface and sleeper goby are always pecking at the algae on my live rock

 

[PeterEde]

Rabbit fish

Mine cleaned up a lot of hair algae and is always pecking

 

[vetteguy53081]

Pin cushion urchin
Astrea snail
turbo grazer
cerith snail
Carribean blue leg hermits