Emerald crabs

[EthanPhillyCheesesteak]

So I ordered 2 emerald crabs from LiveAquaria, I was just wondering if that would be enough to eventually clean a 30 gallon tank of algae? Plus snails and a few hermits? I also ordered an anemone crab and a pocillopora crab for my pocillopora coral, but I don’t think that they eat algae?

[Oldsalt01]

You are the most reliable member of your CUC! If your tank's experience a problem with algae, then you need to figure out what the basis for your algae problem is, and to do that you need to figure out it's nature: Brown, Red, Bright Green, Dark Green, Blue, Black? What's it's texture: Slimy to the touch, long and fuzzy, short and stiff, round green bubbles? Does it blow off easily when you hit it with a blast from your turkey baster (assuming you have one), or does it stay put? Does it grow only on the substrate, only on the rock or glass, or all over. Is it a sudden appearance or something you've been battling for a while? Have you added anything new recently: inverts, frags, rocks, etc? What kind of water do you use for making your saltwater (assuming again, you do)? How often do you check your water chemistry and what kind of tests do you use? Are you over feeding the tank? How often do you do water changes? And you thought you were gonna get an easy answer, lol. You cannot rely on crabs alone to fix the issues we all cause in our tanks. So give us more info and we can help guide you. Tank's age, lighting schedule, filtration, feeding schedule, population breakdown, etc. Give us more, please.

[EthanPhillyCheesesteak]

Yea, definitely expected a easier answer😂. But my tank is a year and a half old, I have algae of almost every kind, bubble is a nuisance, also have a lot of red slime. I keep my main lights on till about 9, then I turn on the smaller night light(can’t remember the name sorry, it’s an aqueon something) till about 6:30. The main light is a Fluval sky. I feed once a day, just enough for all of the fish, and a little for the anemone. I feed the fish flakes and frozen mysis. I have 2 red Mexican legged hermits, 3 turbo snails, a bubble tip Anemone, a orange spotted goby, a Gold Nugget Maroon Clown and a Percula clown, a fire dart fish, a six line wrasse, and a flame angelfish. The algae grows everywhere, I’ll try to get you a picture in a minute.

[EthanPhillyCheesesteak]

It looks horrible, that’s why I’m trying to fix this

[Firefish15]

That might be a pretty high bioload for a 30g. Even if you aren't feeding wastefully, that's a lot of fish. What are your nitrate and phosphate levels?

[falcooo]

I'm sure there's a better answer someone will add, but to start. Manually removal as much as possible, and cut back on feeding to every other day as well as cutting back light. Also test your phosphates, and if they're high additional water changes and potentially add a phosphate removal pad in with your filter media. These methods will help buy you time until you get a grasp on the algae and what's causing the issues.

[EthanPhillyCheesesteak]

My nitrate is almost nothing, I’ll have to check phosphate again

And I’ll try those methods 

[Oldsalt01]

Your Nitrate probably appears to be 0 because all that algae is uptaking it before it gets to a testable level in the water column. I’m with everyone else on this one: too many fish, overfeeding, and some obvious tank neglect have gotten you to where the tank is. That’s not a personal attack, just my humble opinion formed from almost 50 years, on and off, of keeping saltwater tanks. High nutrient levels combined with a high bioload and lack of tank maintenance will bight you on the butt every time. Manually remove as much as you can, net clean the sand, or siphon it off to clear off as much cyano as possible. Scrape the glass while siphoning to clear as much algae in suspension out. Manually scrub the rock (out of the tank if possible). If bubble algae, DO NOT break the bubbles in the tank. That will just make it spread. Do you siphon your sand with water changes? If not, START, with every other water change. Throwing crabs in there is not going to fix this. Your intervention will! Consider lowering your fish numbers by at least 2 to drop your bioload and cut back to every other day feeding. Do weekly water changes of 15-20% for a while to help drop your nutrient levels and change your floss 2x per week and your carbon every 2-3 weeks. I might even be tempted to do a 50% water change for a couple of weeks, depending on my water source. Also consider an alternative to flakes. They can be very high in nitrate/phosphate levels. High quality pellets may be a choice. If nothing else, get started asap. The longer you wait the bigger this issue will get. So roll up your sleeves and get to work! Keep us posted on results. We’re here to help, even if some of it sounds like tough love. 😉

[EthanPhillyCheesesteak]

I do 15 and 20 percent water changes about every week, but I can do a few 50 percent changes. I change between mysis and flakes about every other day. Frozen mysis. I use color enhancing flakes.

I’m kind of a newb at this, sorry😂. 

I also don’t have a ton of money right now

[DreC80]

I put a couple of emerald crabs in my wife's nano tank and they took out the bubble algae in 3 days.  I wouldn't expect miracles from any cuc though.  As others have stated it's going to take proper husbandry to get things under control as you have a significant amount of algae.  

[EthanPhillyCheesesteak]

Yea, I’m going to have to do a lot more than just crabs😂.

[Firefish15]

Hey though, in a couple months, you could be able to look back at your tank now and be really pleased with the progress you've made. 

[Oldsalt01]

I fully understand the finances thing. And please don’t take my “recommendations” as indictments. One more thing comes to mind about your cyano..... that nasty red slimy stuff. I’ve used a fish net to get most of it off the sand with good results, but you do lose some of your substrate in the process. I’m willing to bet your sand has a fair amount of detritus if you haven’t been vacuuming it. Cyano generally is a good indication of too low flow in the tank, so you should consider adding a powerhead to up the flow. You can pick up nano pumps that work well enough for under $35. Eheim and Hydor make nano pumps that will run up to 300gph for around that and they’re great little pumps. And you don’t have to apologize for being a “newbie”. We all started out as one. Even with all my years and tanks behind me I’m still learning, usually from doing something stupid! Hang in there. 😉

[EthanPhillyCheesesteak]

1 minute ago, Oldsalt01 said:

I fully understand the finances thing. And please don’t take my “recommendations” as indictments. One more thing comes to mind about your cyano..... that nasty red slimy stuff. I’ve used a fish net to get most of it off the sand with good results, but you do lose some of your substrate in the process. I’m willing to bet your sand has a fair amount of detritus if you haven’t been vacuuming it. Cyano generally is a good indication of too low flow in the tank, so you should consider adding a powerhead to up the flow. You can pick up nano pumps that work well enough for under $35. Eheim and Hydor make nano pumps that will run up to 300gph for around that and they’re great little pumps. And you don’t have to apologize for being a “newbie”. We all started out as one. Even with all my years and tanks behind me I’m still learning. Hang in there. 😉

I have a pump in the tank, and it said that It was made for 30 gallons? And one more question, my Gold Nugget Maroon Clown seems to be hosting red slime? Is this normal? Every time I look at him, he is laying in the red slime and rubbing against it? When I try to get in the tank to clean the slime, he attacks my hand? It’s not really a deliberate, trying to kill me attack, more like a warning? It never really hurts, he just pokes at me?

[Griever]

If you're doing those big of water changes weekly and your feeding schedule is as you say, something isn't adding up. What is your water source? Are you using RODI confirmed with a TDS meter? 

[Oldsalt01]

Clowns! Ya gotta love them. But try to figure them out and u’ll go boinkers. After all this time, nothing they do surprises me. He (or she) is defending it’s territory. I had a big Tomato 30 years ago that would bite my forearm and could actually draw blood, if I was dumb enough to reach into the tank. Regardless, that cyano has to go. I’m a bit surprised the BTA isn’t hosting him, but like I said, go figure a clown. Tell us more about your filtration and circulation and be specific.

Good question @Griever.

[falcooo]

10 hours ago, EthanPhillyCheesesteak said:

I change between mysis and flakes about every other day. Frozen mysis.

Do you thaw the whole cube and feed? Because I believe theirs a lot of excess sh*t in those frozen cubes, could be wrong. But I put the cube in a little strainer and run it under water to thaw and then just feed the actual shrimp pieces. So none of the filler junks up the tank.

[EthanPhillyCheesesteak]

11 hours ago, falcooo said:

Do you thaw the whole cube and feed? Because I believe theirs a lot of excess sh*t in those frozen cubes, could be wrong. But I put the cube in a little strainer and run it under water to thaw and then just feed the actual shrimp pieces. So none of the filler junks up the tank.

Yea, that’s what I do, I put the cube in a small cup of water to thaw out, then I suck it up in a turkey baster. I try to only suck up the mysis.

[EthanPhillyCheesesteak]

 

17 hours ago, Oldsalt01 said:

Clowns! Ya gotta love them. But try to figure them out and u’ll go boinkers. After all this time, nothing they do surprises me. He (or she) is defending it’s territory. I had a big Tomato 30 years ago that would bite my forearm and could actually draw blood, if I was dumb enough to reach into the tank. Regardless, that cyano has to go. I’m a bit surprised the BTA isn’t hosting him, but like I said, go figure a clown. Tell us more about your filtration and circulation and be specific.

Good question @Griever.

I have a marine land filter meant for a 30 gallon tank, when I get the money, I want to get a canister filter. I don’t have a protein skimmer yet, and I need to get one of those.

[banasophia]

Hello, I’m gonna chime in here with what I think are a couple of simple first steps. 🙂 

 

1) Get an algae scraping magnet (I recommend the flipper) and clean the front and side glass, plan to do that every day. It will make it look a hundred times better and gives you a chance to really look closely at your tank at least once a day.

2) Get a much larger clean up crew of snails... I think you said you only have three snails, 2 hermits, and soon the emeralds. Here is a link to the Reef Cleaners recommended cleanup crew for a 30 gallon breeder, you can see he recommends around 60 snails of certain types for a 30 gallon tank.

https://www.reefcleaners.org/aquarium-store/quick-crew-30-breeder

 

Looks to me like much of that algae in the pic is on the glass... I would clean it then post another picture so we can get a better idea of what’s going on. My tank’s nice, but it looks terrible when I get lazy and don’t clean the glass for a few days. 

[EthanPhillyCheesesteak]

Yea, I just cleaned the glass, but I’m not home right now. I usually just use a rag, but I’ll invest in a scraper. The red slime that is in my tank seems to only be on one singular rock and on my heater.

38 minutes ago, banasophia said:

Hello, I’m gonna chime in here with what I think are a couple of simple first steps. 🙂 

 

1) Get an algae scraping magnet (I recommend the flipper) and clean the front and side glass, plan to do that every day. It will make it look a hundred times better and gives you a chance to really look closely at your tank at least once a day.

2) Get a much larger clean up crew of snails... I think you said you only have three snails, 2 hermits, and soon the emeralds. Here is a link to the Reef Cleaners recommended cleanup crew for a 30 gallon breeder, you can see he recommends around 60 snails of certain types for a 30 gallon tank.

https://www.reefcleaners.org/aquarium-store/quick-crew-30-breeder

 

Looks to me like much of that algae in the pic is on the glass... I would clean it then post another picture so we can get a better idea of what’s going on. My tank’s nice, but it looks terrible when I get lazy and don’t clean the glass for a few days. 

 

[mcarroll]

Unstable nutrient conditions causes algae blooms, whether levels are high or low.  Unstable alk, ca and mg will make it hard or impossible for coraline algae to dominate.

 

So get things stablized and this will eventually work itself out.

 

In the mean time, you'll need more snails than crabs, and (with cyano) you may have to do more of the work than the inverts.....cyano isn't very delicious apparently.  😄

[Firefish15]

@EthanPhillyCheesesteak If you haven't gotten a scraper yet, I would highly recommend the Flipper Cleaner. Awesome tool to have. I just got one, and I'm happy with it.

[Lugmos12]

Cut down on the feeding and get on a regular schedule for it. 1x every other day (dry), and 1x/week frozen etc. Cut the light schedule down as well (this helped in my case).

[Aquatic Spendthrift]

1 no need to get a canister filter

2 15-20% water change aint gona cut it with that bioload

All i think you need is a nother method of nutrent export such as skimmer or algea scruber and yes you can use more cuc.