cuc?

bbones · Mar 20, 2019

I’m having some really bad luck at this hobby thus far.

i’ve been trying with some clean up crew... i have a lot of green hair algae and the red slime stuff.

so far i’ve added nassarius snails which are nice and doing well in the tank. I had a smaller serpent star which was doing okay, until it tried making its cave trap over my clown house. I took it back today, and picked up a sally lightfoot crab. so far it’s charged at my clowns multiple times and they’re stressed out kicking sand up on it and running out of their house. I’m returning.

i only have a netted partial lid so i’m not sure if snails would be the best? and since my clowns live on the floor, apparently nothing mean and crawly.

Any suggestions?

edit: also have a small zoa

MombasaLionfish · Mar 20, 2019

You probably need some hermits.

Jekyl · Mar 21, 2019

Tank size?

Bounce House · Mar 21, 2019

Your tank probably just needs to get past the new tank stage rather than worrying too much about clean up crew. I have a well established tank and I don't have any clean up crew except for hitchhikers like bristle worms. Personally I am not a fan of crabs in a reef tank.

Jvesche20 · Mar 21, 2019

Jekyl said:
Tank size?

Just about to ask this.

You can get turbo snails they wont bother your clowns.

For the algae what is your light schedule? Do you have windows near the tank? What are your parameters? The red slime algae are caused by high nitrates, phosphates, nitrite or low flow to a certain area. The best way to get rid of it is to lower phosphates and manually remove all of the hair algae. Take a brush and scrape the algae off the rocks. If you need to take out the rocks to do this.

bbones · Mar 21, 2019

Jvesche20 said:
Just about to ask this.

You can get turbo snails they wont bother your clowns.

For the algae what is your light schedule? Do you have windows near the tank? What are your parameters? The red slime algae are caused by high nitrates, phosphates, nitrite or low flow to a certain area. The best way to get rid of it is to lower phosphates and manually remove all of the hair algae. Take a brush and scrape the algae off the rocks. If you need to take out the rocks to do this.

it’s a little 20g. i actually introduced some globs of the cyano when i started up my tank... it’s just spreading a lot!

light schedule is pretty much off 9p-whenever i wake up for work(lately 630a) and there is a non curtained window by the tank. i use a orbit ic and normally only use blues and whites

i got two turbo snails and they’re eating at stuff.. read they might not like the cyano? trying to keep it at bay by scooping it out with the net so they can just get at the hair algae

i had a nitrite spike(0.25)after moving my rocks/sand around a week ago... nitrate has been pretty consistent between 10-20ppm

Z Burn's Reefing · Mar 21, 2019

turbos do a good job, but knock stuff over. They also can increase nutrients when they die quite dramatically. I'd suggest you ride it out a little longer. Whenever I have algae, it eventually burns itself out as long as I keep up good husbandry (weekly water changes, clean RODI water, don't overfeed, siphon detritus during water changes, etc.)