What is the best fishless clean up crew?

[MaverickReef]

Hello all,

I have a 120 reef tank and am currently in a fallow period where all of my fish are in QT (Ich irradiation method). I have a fairly large hammer colony and a few zoa frags as I am just getting started with corals. My concern is that I'm starting to see green hair algae beginning to grow on the rock work. All of my utilitarian fish (small sailfin tang, small foxface) are in QT, so my primary algae grazers are gone for another 70 days or so, is there any clean up crew that you would recommend to clean the sand bed and rock work that are invertebrates? The fish will be added back eventually and the inverts will have to be in qt before adding them into the main tank, but I need some sort of cleaning going on during this process. My nitrates are at 5 ppm and phosphate at 0.03 ppm, algae hasn't been a problem for months while the fish are in the tank. Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[adittam]

Tuxedo urchins. Bar none.

 

[Jekyl]

Hello all,

I have a 120 reef tank and am currently in a fallow period where all of my fish are in QT (Ich irradiation method). I have a fairly large hammer colony and a few zoa frags as I am just getting started with corals. My concern is that I'm starting to see green hair algae beginning to grow on the rock work. All of my utilitarian fish (small sailfin tang, small foxface) are in QT, so my primary algae grazers are gone for another 70 days or so, is there any clean up crew that you would recommend to clean the sand bed and rock work that are invertebrates? The fish will be added back eventually and the inverts will have to be in qt before adding them into the main tank, but I need some sort of cleaning going on during this process. My nitrates are at 5 ppm and phosphate at 0.03 ppm, algae hasn't been a problem for months while the fish are in the tank. Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Reefcleaners.org and buy the cleaner package for a 60g. I believe all of their tanks are fishless so no concern needing to QT

 

[MaverickReef]

Reefcleaners.org and buy the cleaner package for a 60g. I believe all of their tanks are fishless so no concern needing to QT

Thank you that sounds like a great plan!

 

[dedragon]

urchins, chitons, snails, and especially tropical abalone are amazing fishless cleanup crew. Then u have specific fixes like lettuce nudibranch(sea slug) for bryopsis and berghia nudibranch for aiptasia, etc

 

[adittam]

Reefcleaners.org and buy the cleaner package for a 60g. I believe all of their tanks are fishless so no concern needing to QT

I've had both good luck and bad luck with shipments from reefcleaners. If you're in a cold climate, I would heavily caution against ordering from them via the free USPS Priority mail option until it is spring. I recently ordered a whole bunch of snails from them, and none of the trochus snails made it through shipping in cold weather (all of the hot packs in the package were completely cold by the time it arrived), and many of the turbo snails died as well after a few days.

 

[MaverickReef]

Reefcleaners.org and buy the cleaner package for a 60g. I believe all of their tanks are fishless so no concern needing to QT

I ended up ordering from reefcleaners and was very impressed with the results. Thank you again for your suggestions!

 

[paintman]

Tuxedo urchins. Bar none.

Fake news!!!!!! I just put 3 urchins in my 220 for some hair algae issues. I have watched them for 2 weeks now sit directly on top of the algae for days hoping they are eating it. Only to have them move on and leave the hair algae just the way it was before i spent the $75 on the dang things. Waste of money!

 

[Paul B]

Manatees. ;Smuggrin

 

[Garf]

Fake news!!!!!! I just put 3 urchins in my 220 for some hair algae issues. I have watched them for 2 weeks now sit directly on top of the algae for days hoping they are eating it. Only to have them move on and leave the hair algae just the way it was before i spent the $75 on the dang things. Waste of money!

So, they’ve eaten nothing for 2 weeks?

 

[Jekyl]

Fake news!!!!!! I just put 3 urchins in my 220 for some hair algae issues. I have watched them for 2 weeks now sit directly on top of the algae for days hoping they are eating it. Only to have them move on and leave the hair algae just the way it was before i spent the $75 on the dang things. Waste of money!

Nothing really eats the long stuff.

 

[paintman]

So, they’ve eaten nothing for 2 weeks?

Not sure what they're eating. The one has decided to climb the glass instead of working on the rocks. And the other one just keeps crawling around on the same rock loaded with GHA but doesn't seem to eat any of it. PIncushion Urchins