Clean Up Crew help

[pdiehm]

With my 120 cycling quite nicely, the inevitable diatom bloom will be occurring probably within the next 2-3 weeks.

From what I've read about Clean Up Crews, your first crew should be for approximately 1/2 of your tank size. In my case, a 30 or 40 gallon clean up crew would suffice for the diatom bloom and such, until the tank moves to the next stop of algae.

The question I have is should I look into crews with Hermits, or bypass hermits?

 

[haleyf1024]

I would say yes to hermits. They do a great job cleaning up fish waste, much better than snails in that area. Just have tons of extra shells

 

[RavenSF]

I went snail only but included bumble bee and nassarius snails to eat scraps and waste. I always hate that a lot of companies try to sell people dozens if not hundreds of snails and crabs, just to have them die. When they die they're just going to foul the water and make more algae etc. I say start off with less than you think you need and increase if they aren't keeping up. You'll always be the one cleaning the glass so they just need to take care of the rocks.

 

[haleyf1024]

My snails seem to not like their job. They just roam the algae free rocks, eat for maybe an hour at night on the glass, and then return to the rocks. Its funny really lol. Only snail that does help out once in a while is my zebra turbo and my mexican turbo. My bumble bees do less than all of my other snails. The nass snails do clean pretty well, but prefer to wait until they find pellet food instead of cleaning waste. I have about 60-80 hermits in my 110 gallon, and they help the most But maybe my CUC is just weird and lazy lol

 

[glb]

My nerite snails are great. They clean everything-glass, sand, rocks, extra food. Plus they can right themselves if they flip over and can shake off the hermits that bother them.

 

[RavenSF]

I like the zebra turbos (the Asian ones not the ones from Mexico), I've never had one die on me yet. Banded Trochus are great too because they're pretty and breed in your tank, so they can self regulate their population in theory.