Clean up Crew too Large! You are Nuts!

[johnmaloney]

We get this, so I want to explain how our custom clean up crews work, in the hopes we can better serve your needs:

 

Very Light - Conservative - you are the kind of person who pays meticulous attention to your tank, stare at it most of the day and just want something to get the areas you can't see - algae has no chance of taking hold before you manually remove it immediately.

 

Light - Small but maybe it reproduces and keeps things generally under control. Tank maintenance is advanced and husbandry is up to par. You are a lighter feeder probably.

 

Medium - For what I call medium or normal. It will be pretty strong in an overall sense. If added to a generally clean tank it will keep the standard new algae under control and slowly reduce an established common problem.

 

Strong - You are too busy too keep up with numerous tanks for algae removal, and/or you keep your fish and coral happy with regular feedings, or you have an established problem and working at removal, but can wait for gradual results because it is generally under control.

 

Very Strong - You have regular algae problems. Perhaps the tank gets indirect sunlight, or it is in an abnormally warm room...old tank syndrome... generous feeding to maximize coral growth syndrome, rock leaching nutrients, etc.. .

 

 

The Comments Section: If your tank is spotless without a crew, let us know, if your tank has algae let us know. Blank means regular algae problems based on strength of crew requested.

What the crew represents - a general target that we have found that works.

 

Can 23 snails/crabs really live in a 10 gallon tank with 2 fish?

 

yes. 1 urchin or a sea hare etc.. would be too much unless tank husbandry was poor, they need large amounts of filamentous (or coralline algae in the case of the urchin) to be properly sustained. But:

 

12 Dwarf Ceriths - eat just about anything but macro algae and seagrass and living organisms. Some filamentous algae it won't eat some it will. The nooks of your rock work have lots of food for them unless it is pretty squarish. Pockets fill up and in the long run old tank syndrome develops. This prevents it.

5 Florida ceriths - Stir the sand and clean the blunt of the rocks - diverse diet - can right itself etc...

(Ceriths are the diatom and slime specialists in this particular package, they are better at it then other species)

6 nassarius snails - To clean up after the fish. What goes in comes out, and some misses. Your nassarius snails might be fast, but they don't move around that much otherwise. Your small fish will swim around all day for a week on two pinches, 3 nassarius per cleanup for the 9 feet they will travel won't be a problem.

5 Blue Legs - will scavenge, keep out hair algae and may attack snails for shells. We only have them in this sample recommendation because someone asked for them. We would put one CHiton in probably if hermits were on no and they wanted diversity. (depending on available rockwork - or maybe some nerites, depend son how old the tank is, or if species of nuisance algae).

 

Because they eat a variety of food, they are smaller organisms (Dwarf ceriths are small if you order 12 you get what we consider "12" to be. Very small pico type orders aren't messed with..much), they will not starve, and they will get the job done for general common problems. It is not 23 cleaners. It is 23 cleaners designed to specialize in certain food groups. I know there are a few people who have never ordered crews from us that think we are out of our minds, but once you discount the dwarf ceriths, and go to the strength you want it makes sense.

 

For Example, the Strong package from before:

 

12 Dwarf Ceriths

5 Florida ceriths

6 nassarius snails

5 Blue Legs

 

Not so crazy now right?

5 Florida ceriths

6 nassarius snails - we already talked about them, discount for algae equation

5 Blue Legs

 

Leaving you with only 1 per gallon of "normal" sized algae eaters. Think of the dwarf ceriths as 1.25, you wanted strong after all.

 

But don't the dwarf ceriths add something? Yes, but since they clean areas the others can't, it doesn't really add much to what food will be taken from competition.

 

Still think we are crazy? Tone down the crew to the level you want. You can always build up. We can't be perfect, but we want to improve on the recommendation method that has been in effect in the hobby for awhile. I think we have made an improvement on how CUCs are assembled by retailers, and we are trying the best we can but we can always use your honest input to improve our service.