Clean up crew question

[Payne Train]

Does adding a clean up crew have the potential to shoot your ammonia or other parameters up ?
I am wanting to add a clean up crew tomorrow and a new fish. My tank is almost 4 weeks old

I had a "custom crew" created on reef cleaners. Its a total of about 110 snails for my SR 80 tank. (Including 40-50 dwarf ceriths).
That just seemed like a really large order of snails.

 

[New&no clue]

If your tank is properly cycled than no. Now depending on the tank size and number your adding it could if some die. If you have a small tank and a large cuc there may not be enough food for all of them if some die in a small tank it could cause an ammonia spike. If you have a large tank, and a couple die then you should be okay.

 

[LiveWire]

I agree and also would say please dont add 110 snails all at once to your system. If your system is very large I would add half that amount and see how they do. If they are not keeping up them you can always order more in the future. Doing that will minimize the chances of a lot of them starving once the tank is clean.

It would be good to know how large your system is as that seems like a lot of cleaners for a small or even mid sized system.

 

[AquaPhilNJ]

I've done the reefcleaner.com orders before, I think IMO several are already dead and the spike I've gotten was on the nitrate side. In past I've had a few spikes but in my personal experience ammonia stayed zero, where nitrate went high, but my tank hasn't been NEW for sometime. Now I have bio-pellets (IDK 9 months now maybe), and seems impossible to get nitrate spike. Those power filtration options like algae scrubber/reactor , bio-pellets, macro-algae refugium will have you never doing water changes again.

Also I think the tank is somewhat too new for the snails, but I suppose you'll find out. After some time the live rock gets very small algae buildup or small patches of cyano and snails are good to keep it completely gone. Also if you purchase GFO (or any phosphate reducer) make sure to not hit zero phosphate, or all snails will die, happened to me. Even if can't see snails eating anything if phosphate is above zero seems there is a little something there for them at least in an established tank.

 

[Payne Train]

The tank is an IM SR 80 gallon. I have about 75 lbs of live rock and a 2 in sand bed.
I am in the middle of my first diatom bloom.
I had also thought that my order could be cut in half and that would be a good start.

 

[Payne Train]

I had thought that I would be more in the ballpark of
25 - dwarf cerith
8 - fly speckled cerith
6 - florida cerith
6 - nerite
6 - astraea

9 - assorted hermits

 

[Brian_68]

I just added the reefcleaners 40 gallon cleaner package to my 30 gallon tank over 80 snails and hermits with no issues at all. I had less than a handful not make it from shipping so all were in good shape.