basile
Well-Known Member
From the beginning of my project i didn't want to use snails or hermits as my primary deffence againts algaes and detritus because they die all the time and a constant amount of money is spent replensihing your stocks of cuc and your tank cleanliness varies a lot from month to month . And i think i've won my bet. My reseache led me to a few alternatives.
The Urchins are more resistant , they live longer and the list of algea they eat is far more impressive than most snails you'll ever buy. They don't climb out of the tank, they don't need help to turn themselve around and you don't need an army of them. I was so happy to see a bit of Ulva comming out of that rock. It means that i wont have to suppliment anymore. These little buggers will be able to find food by themselves, now and if Ulva was to grw to fast i just have to resart the GFO reactor to stop the Ulva, it helps to know what the algae consumes and what it needs.
Seastars; work either during the day or night or both and don't succomb easily to parameters. resistant and 2-3 is enough for my system.
A Echinaster seastar is very usefull and does very well indeed.Not too big And it work.
Serpent star
Sea cucumbers for the sand is great they multiply by themselve if their enough food and work the system effortly.
The babylonia snail or Butterscotch snail , or super tonga nassarius snail which is abosutly not related to , but anyway is actually very useful for detritus but don't over do it my 150 G only has 10 thats it.
The strawberry Conch is one of the best sand sifter around without being destructive to your sand microfauna unlike the sandsifting star it doesn't destroy the bacterial layers of your tank. Which you need to help with your filtration . only 3 in my 150 is enough. and the sand is clean. At 3 o'clock in the morning thats what they do, they vaccuum themselves up lol. A night tour once and a while don't hurt either to see whats going on in your tank.
When you have lots of herbivore don't forget to put a tablet at the bottom every 2 days, if they don't touch it , means they have enough to eat and you can skip a few days, but if they do rush on it keep them comming. The mistake people make is not feeding them because they say if i feed them they wont clean anymore. i find this a bit cruel and nonsense. They always clean at any rate. If your tank is clean and they still eat, they're starving.....One reason you may be always buying new cuc all the time, you buy too much and then they starve.
One little trick i do know if you clean your glass everyday, your CUC wont waste time cleaning it up when they could clean up your tank. And you don't need snails to do the glass really and reducing your lights to when your home only will give time to your clean up crew to catch up to the maintenance of your tank. Talking to a few different LFS they only have them 5-6 h a day, the rest is actinic only, so controling and managing your algae growth is also important it would seem.
In conclusion my tank is clean, the rocks, the glass no cyano issues, or any other algaes, i feed twice a day. i have a 75 Gallons refugium for my 150 gallons reef tank, i've turned OFF my GFO so my macroalgae collection has something to grow on and the nitrates and phospahes are nil. i dose both iron, and iodine for the algeas as they're the biggest users. That my observations and the end of my report.
The best macroalgae for phosphate removal is Ulva , it explodes in your refugium and the bests reef safe nitrate exporters are cheato and Caulerpa Prolifera it doesn't take over with good trimming.
