Underestimating the power of.........CUC?

[trmiv]

I run significantly more snails now than I used to back when the trend was zero nitrates and phosphates at all costs. Back then I had like 4 snails in a 120g. Now that I maintain nitrate at 5-10 ppm and phosphates at .07-.1 I’ve got a large assortment of big trochus, nerite, turbos, and ceriths. No idea how many total snails, but probably in the range of 40-45 total in a Reefer 350. I’ve also got three blue legged hermits because I find them amusing.

 

[stephen wyard]

I try to buy other critters that last a long time serpent stars ,crabs ,shrimp and certain fish are all part of my crew.I have some snails over a year old and my cleaner shrimp the same.They do a great job.

 

[mtfish]

If I find a cool brittle star or nerite in the bay, I drop those in. I have added tunicates, sponges and mud dwelling mini feather dusters also from the bay. I did buy snails from KP Aquatics one time. Everything else came in with the original live rock, which includes some crabs and pistol shrimps. Had a mantis but it either starved or got eaten. CUC do their thing and I really don't think about it.

 

[ca1ore]

I used to reliably replenish the CUC in my system every 6 months …. then I pushed it to a year …. then to two years …. and frankly saw very little difference. Bristle worms, brittle stars and various herbivores seem to do the job just fine. Snails never seem to last very long and my dusky wrasse eats all the crabs. I do add hermits periodically, but less for the rle they play in the CUC and mostly because I enjoy watching them at night.

 

[ychambers]

clean up crews have wrecked more reefs with invasion than I can count.


sounds mean I know, but they did.
here's the formula: start by hands off reefing and allowing the uglies phase per forum rules. add clean up crew at the start or during the outbreak, wait. tank is lost to cyano/ghax1000 posts and owner starts over or takes it down and repeats the initial set of action/inaction steps.


the clean up crew was the external source sure to fix things, that didnt.


thats not to say a clean up crew isn't part of a choice set that could easily be reversed for a different outcome, but they're still part. Its awesome to be invasion free without a cuc.

yes I have seen cuc's beat an invasion, but its not the majority of times. the majority of times is posting in the nuisance algae forum for help beyond cuc as we speak.

I'm very new and learning (6 weeks in). Can you explain what you mean by tank is lost to cyano/ghax1000? Thanks!

 

[brandon429]

Generally the clean up crews we add will graze across surfaces seeing what they can find and in some cases they’ll eat green hair algae or Cyanobacteria saving us the removal work. That’s the tried and true way we use clean up crews in reefing.


as thousands upon thousands of reefs + clean up crews are reported in threads we can track the outcomes and find patterns for losing tanks to invasion or preventing that situation

most reefers will sit there and watch an invasion take over even with a cuc in the tank. They don’t know that manual guided removal is what saves any reef from loss, deliberately cleaning / removing invasions vs leave them in place to see what happens


the right way to use a clean up crew is never to remove an invasion of any type, we should fix our own tanks by cleaning them and re assembling an uninvaded reef. We -then- add clean up crews to the cleaned reef vs the infested one, and see if they can prevent the invasion- we don’t depend on them to fix it.

they will eat leftover food until growths pop up for them to graze, hopefully. My remark above is meant to reflect how people use and depend on clean up crews and are more often failed by them than helped, regarding algae and cyano challenge posts.

instead of stacking in rocks expecting to never have to remove, reef oppositely.

make a light stack that is easily lifted out of the tank, easy external gardening, and set back in. This access allows you to opt out of all uglies and never lose your reef to an invasion. An accessible reef can’t be invaded just like my tiny garden can’t be invaded by weeds, I’ll butter knife them right out. I have the will to guide a 10x10 foot garden, we can all muster the same will to prevent losing aquariums to invasion and it’s us that have the final say, not gastropods

 

[Snoopdog]

I used to blow money on these, but the last order I did will be my final one. I may go and buy a single cerith if I am already in the store but that is it, no more. Why waste money when they slowly die. I am paying for shells.

 

[dragon99]

There's certainly a push by vendors to overdo it, but a CUC is invaluable in a reef. And hobbyist also tend to overbuy to "fix" a problem quickly instead of giving it time which leads to the boom and bust cycle.

Love trochus snails, ceriths, and I have a new-found appreciation for astraeas:

 

[NashobaTek]

I'm very new and learning (6 weeks in). Can you explain what you mean by tank is lost to cyano/ghax1000? Thanks!

Most new tanks started with dead dry rock go through the uglies, red cyano and green hair algae x1000. Currently my tank is getting to the end of the bad uglies.
Tang is starting to get the GHA under control and the cyano is going away.
If you feed heavy or a lot of the frozen or live food you add a lot of phosphate to the tank. Even flake food will do it. With high phosphate and nitRATE you get the uglies

 

[NashobaTek]

I'm very new and learning (6 weeks in). Can you explain what you mean by tank is lost to cyano/ghax1000? Thanks!

Most new tanks started with dead dry rock go through the uglies, red cyano and green hair algae x1000. Currently my tank is getting to the end of the bad uglies.
Tang is starting to get the GHA under control and the cyano is going away.
If you feed heavy or a lot of the frozen or live food you add a lot of phosphate to the tank. Even flake food will do it. With high phosphate and nitRATE you get the uglies

 

[NashobaTek]

I have a small CUC right now because of the sister-in-law who killed everything CUC wise. Now that she's gone I plan to add a few more

 

[Doglips56]

hermits are fun to watch but id never buy one again

Just curious as to why? We really enjoy watching our hermits. I’m not sure which kind they are but they were all added at the same time. I have one that has blue legs that has grown quite large but I have others that are still so tiny they’re hard to see. They like to get into all of the tiny places in the rock work where bigger things can’t get.

 

[brandon429]

dragon that is certainly on the ideal end of the spectrum they are saving you work there, clearly.

 

[tautog83]

Just curious as to why? We really enjoy watching our hermits. I’m not sure which kind they are but they were all added at the same time. I have one that has blue legs that has grown quite large but I have others that are still so tiny they’re hard to see. They like to get into all of the tiny places in the rock work where bigger things can’t get.

No real reason I guess , if they ate a couple snails I'd be ok lol. Just feel like snails are all ya really need . Nassarius, cerith, trochus and a couple turbos all ya ever need unless you need some bubble algae control

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

Underestimating the power of........the CLEANUP CREW! Wait don't close this thread just yet! Hear me out. Yes most of us know the importance of a cleanup crew in our reef tank but I think sometimes we underestimate the work that they actually do that a lot of times go unnoticed.

What is a cleanup crew or CUC? We have a very good article here but basically it's the tank janitors of your tank like snails, crabs, starfish etc. that consume the uneaten, decaying food as well as fish waste and things like that. They also keep the glass, rock and sand clean among other things.

So what do I mean about "underestimating the power of a cleanup crew?" I think sometimes we underestimate the GOOD that having them in the tank does! We also underestimate the BAD that happens when the cleanup crew start to deplete. The thing about a cleanup crew is that they do eventually start to die off and they need to be replenished. Just recently my sand started getting covered in some green/brown type of algae and even after stirring it's the type that resettles and comes back. I realized that I hadn't replenished my cleaners recently so I made an order and got the new crew in place. Two days later the sand is noticeably cleaner and I can see the hermit crabs and snails eating away on the sand and doing their job!

Today let's talk about the clean up crew a little!

1. How important do you think a good clean up crew is to a saltwater reef aquarium?

2. What are your favorite cleaners?

3. How often do you "replenish" the cleaning crew in your tank?

1. How important do you think a good clean up crew is to a saltwater reef aquarium?

if you're looking for long-term success, you better have a really good clean up crew

2. What are your favorite cleaners?

Before, sulfur denitrator was part of my artificial clean up crew. Now I mainly rely on 60 Pacific oysters , for 90 gallon volume and like 500 Nassarius snails. And like 12 little goby fish

3. How often do you "replenish" the cleaning crew in your tank?

Pacific oysters rarely die on me, but we do sell them and so we have to replenish them every so often, the snails they're multiplying and don't worry about them and same with the fish.

1 of 43 carnation corals aka dendronephthya sp

 

[Back where it all began]

I was just thinking it is time again. Every so many months I get hermits, emeralds, and a few turbo's from my lfs which is a great shop. I have a conch and a starfish I rarely see.

 

[ReefLab]

My elegance coral does a number on snails so I try to replenish every 6 months or so - after a 45 day fishless quarantine of course.

one aspect of CUC I think is underestimated is the biological diversity they bring in on their shells. It’s like live rock without the risk of bristle worms or other pests.

Drop in a sinking pellet once a week and turn off the pumps when you feed so they can get some food - especially in a new tank!

 

[GeoSquid]

I have a niger and picaso trigger in my tank, so no clean up crew! I live by the beach on southern calif and sometimes collect my own hermits and turbos. I think I collected 50+ hermits the last time and put them in my 180 gallon and they were all gone in under a week.

 

[jambi]

The huge CUC packages that many vendors sell are a huge mistake. Don't do it.

Unless you've got a problem, adding animals intended to 'fix' the problem is useless at best, and can actually be harmful. 3 month old tank, starting 'the uglies'... a bit of diatom, maybe a cyano patch, the new aquarist sees the marketing on a huge CUC package, and adds 50 snails, 30 hermits, maybe and urchin, conch...

And, in time, they all starve.

IMHO, fish are far better at eating algae than inverts. Foxface, tangs, algae blennies, etc. Much more active algae eaters than any snail. I've got a Foxface, a Tomini tang, and a Scopus tang. Talk about algae eaters... they spend every minute of every day poking around for every scap of algae they can find. A quarter sheet of Nori lasts about 5 minutes in my tank (they get one every day).

I don't do hermits, at all. Never again. Picked one too many off of healthy corals. Crabs are opportunistic feeders, I don't want them in my reef. Other crabs? I like a sump monster. Don't have one at the moment, but I'm on the lookout for one. Big gorilla crab or some such, help keep deposits in the sump broken up. Emeralds are OK in the tank, porcelain crabs are cool, if you can keep them. Neat critters, but I don't keep many crabs. None, at the moment.

Snails? Yeah, I've got some snails. Mine is a bare bottom tank... I've got a few big Mexican Turbo snails... great for algae film on the glass and (plastic) substrate. Also have a few Trochus snails, a couple Ceriths. 140g display, nearly a year old, I've got maybe a dozen snails, and that's PLENTY.

Questions for you: I have a 14 gal biocube and only 1 female clown. Would she get along with a Tang? 1 turbo snail and 3 or 4 hermit crabs for a crew. Lots of brittle starfish-tiny ones. I do have a hell of an issue with hair algae and brown algae on the sand though. I change 5 gallons of water each week-and also add Vibrant. Advice about algae? (PS-Emerald crabs die too easily)

 

[SkiCatTX]

I just ordered a large variety of snails and conchs for my new tank today!

Historically I have tried to maintain both hermit crabs and snails, however, over a few months, the crabs kill all the snails, then kill each other until there are just a few left. This time I'm going without the crabs. I like them, but it's pointless to feed them snails continuously when there is still all that algae everywhere...