Clean up crew

[Conroy]

Hello fellow reefers

A few months ago we started growing some frags in our tank and spent all the money for the light, food, and yah know all the dosing like calcium and such. Then we started getting an awesomely annoying growth of cyano and diatom algea. I have decreased feeding, dimmed lighting, cleaned everything in the tank including sand, and turned lights off for 3 days and still it has grown back. It is now killing one of my frags. We only have one hermit crab. My question is what type of snails and crabs should we be looking to buy for this type of algea and how many is recommended?

[bennyd]

I'd recommend checking out reef cleaners and ask john. Great people over there. Also, I would try to pinpoint the source of all of the algae. Over feeding? Bad water source? Better to figure out why it's there instead of relying on a cleanup crew to keep it at bay when it could be eliminated all together. 🙂

[Conroy]

We us RO/DI water 

phosphates- under 0.10

nitrates- 0-0.5

nitrites-0

ammononia-0

calcium-420

dkh-10

we have a skimmer that runs at all times and a filter that filters 75gallons per hour, we have   Over 12lbs of live rock in a 29gallon tank. The only difference in the last few months is the lighting

we do a 25-30% water change weekly 

 

[A Little Blue]

75gph on 29g tank isn’t much. You could shorten photo-period and intensity of your light. Change your media more often. It’s better to use less but more frequently. Watch what you put in your tank. Frags come with all kinds of nasty. So make sure to inspect them, address issues if there are any and dip. CUC is useless if your basic housekeeping and maintenance is locking. There are many ways to turn your pristine tank into a nasty mess. You need to figure out what works for your tank. Flow, light, detritus control, water quality etc needs to be in balance. I know that it’s easier said than done. But that’s basically how you become successful in this hobby. 

And keep in mind that catastrophic failures can happen to the best in this craft.  

[Smackers4]

@A Little Blue is on the right track. I used to have to clean diatoms off my tank literally everyday and couldn’t figure out why, old depleted reverse osmosis memebrane turned out to be the culprit. Even showing 0 TDS on my meter. Silicates are usually the reason for Brown diatoms.  I replaced the memebrane and it solved my diatom issue. Where are you getting your RODI water from? Also as for your cyano, try chemi clean and make sure to follow directions, it is reef safe as well, had to dose mine twice then never saw cyano again. 

[Conroy]

I have a RODI filter I use to filter and store water. The membrane and cartridges are newer, I am currently using GFO remover in the filter bc we had a bump with phosphates. Which has resolved since. We were told to do that and remove our filter media. I have dimmed the lights (they are on a timer for 8 hours), filtered the sand, water changes, left the lights off for 3 days, and scrapped all of it off sides of tank and the live rock. I have done this several times. The only thing we have not tried is adding a clean up crew and using the said chemicals to kill the algae. At this point we are overly frustrated 

[Conroy]

Also we have contacted reef cleaners awaiting their response! 

[mndfreeze]

Really you should have a CUC in a tank anyway.  In an ideal reef environment you have mouths of all sizes along the entire food chain slurping up stuff and converting the food and light energy you put in down to bacteria nomnom sizes and exported via skimming and water changes.  

 

If you have a bad outbreak though you definitely want to keep an eye on params and all the related things like people have already suggested.  

 

I'm a big fan of trochus snails, cerith (dwarf and florida) snails, spiny astrea, and if you can find a species of nerite that DOESNT try to climb out of your tank, them too.  I also use red legged common reef hermits and blue legged hermits (calcinus tricolor), and a few other decorative species like electric blues and scarlets.  

 

A tiger tail cucumber will work great for your sand bed if you have one, as it injests entire piles of sand then poops it out clean as ever.  Nassarius snails are also good for stirring the sand bed and eating left over meaty bits that fish and coral miss.  They are also an amazing indicator when a fish died since they tend to smell it happening and mob the body the second it gasps its last watery breath. 

 

Reefcleaners also has some other snails like planaxis and a few others I can't remember off hand that help.  IMO, the more sizes you can get, the better.  

 

The old rule of thumb used to be 1 CUC per gallon, but thats vague at best.  Generally you should start with less, but if your outbreak is bad that's a good place to start.  BTW, that would't apply to something tiny like dwarf ceriths, they are so small that 1 per gallon would be insignificant in effect haha.

 

Let us know when reefcleaners gets back to you, I'm curious to what their recommendation will be.

[Conroy]

Thank you! That is a lot of information to take in. We ordered their recommendation of an assortment of snails that included 20 dwarf Ceriths, 6 nassarius, 8 Florida ceriths, and 8 nerites. The cyano bacteria is gone my cleaning and limiting lights must have done the trick. I prefer not to add any chemicals to my tanks. I run a 29 gallon reef tank and a 40 gallon fresh water tank I use RODI water for both. I have ran a fresh water turtle tank and fish tank for years, but started our reef tank a little over a year ago. We just added coral frags and more live rock so I’m guessing that is why the outbreak of algae. We have not had cyano bacteria since the tank cycled the first few months. I also noticed a worm hitchhiker in one of the live rocks we just added. Right now I am still trying to get rid of some hair algae and diatoms. We use a gfo remover in our filter we do not use carbon filter media. I keep clean tanks I change water every week clean the ornaments, sand, gravel, glass, and filters and skimmer. I check water parameters twice a week. My fish are healthy and I have had them over a year, and yes even through tank cycling. I want to thank everyone for their help and suggestions I have learned a lot thanks guys!