CUC, wait for algae?

[SpicierBread]

Hello,

Is it reasonable to by 1-2 CUC for only two clownfish in a new tank, but the tank does not have any algae yet? I try to feed clownfish without too much food leftover, but there always seems to be some floating around and eventually settling. They tend to ignore frozen mysis (only bits that are too big) and sometimes won't eat much of the Seaweed Extreme.

I tend to feed small bits off of one frozen cube (maybe 1/5 -1/8 of a cube at a time), ~8 mysis pellets, and ~4 Seaweed Extreme pellets each day.

Thanks

 

[muzikalmatt]

I try to add clean-up crew to address specific algae as I see it appear.

For example, in my new 10 gallon build it's only been running about 3 months and I only have a bit of diatoms/film algae growing on the glass and rocks. I also have a bit of leftover food at times as I only have a single small cardinalfish in the tank.

So I picked up a single astrea snail for the algae and a small nassarius snail to stir the sandbed and eat leftover food. As more/different algae appears I'll pick up more clean up crew depending on what kind of algae it is or how bad it is.

You definitely don't want to add too much too soon. If they don't have any algae or leftover food to eat they will starve or you'll be forced to feed more until algae appears...which kind of defeats the purpose of a clean up crew.