Best CUC to keep zoa frags clean?

[Reefs and Geeks]

I am searching for recommendations for the best CUC members that would be able to keep a frag rack full of zoas clean. I love fragging and collecting various corals, and find myself getting more into zoas. I only have a couple of snails in my frag tank, and they don't nearly keep up with the algae in the tank. Not that I have tons of algae, but I do find that to keep everything looking great, I need to do a good cleaning with a toothbrush of the tank and frag rack every week or two. It's quite time consuming cleaning around a couple hundred frags with a toothbrush. I'd like to get a good CUC that can work in between the frags to keep the rack and their plugs clean without destroying the frag tank in the process. Any good suggestions? I've been reefing for 7+ years now, but due to my questionable choices in fish (puffer and trigger) I've not ever kept much of a CUC in my display. Now with a dedicated frag tank, I have the chance to utilize a CUC at least for that, but don't know where to start.

 

[Oscar47f]

I use tuxedo urchins, trochus snails, margarita snails, and blue legs and scarlets... curious to see what others say as I’m looking to try new things and expand my clean up crew !

 

[Reefs and Geeks]

I have a couple of urchins in my display that my fish seem to leave alone. They are great algae eaters, but I'm avoiding them in a frag tank due to them constantly carrying around frags I have in the display. I also hear they will leave bite marks on my acrylic racks.

Do you have any issues keeping hermits with snails? Are hermits able to climb well? my frag tank is bare bottom, with a frag rack that is 4" tall. I imagine hermits would fall off the edge of the frag rack and not be able to climb back up. Maybe a good choice for keeping under the rack clean?

 

[spiraling]

blennys. Tailspots stay small. Lawnmowers deserve their name.

 

[Eagle_Steve]

I use black mollies acclimated to salt and snails. My plugs end up with coraline and no algae.

 

[Oscar47f]

I have a couple of urchins in my display that my fish seem to leave alone. They are great algae eaters, but I'm avoiding them in a frag tank due to them constantly carrying around frags I have in the display. I also hear they will leave bite marks on my acrylic racks.

Do you have any issues keeping hermits with snails? Are hermits able to climb well? my frag tank is bare bottom, with a frag rack that is 4" tall. I imagine hermits would fall off the edge of the frag rack and not be able to climb back up. Maybe a good choice for keeping under the rack clean?

Yeah I mean on occasion the crabs will kill a snail for its shell but I try to just replace as needed... haven’t had an issue with an urchin but I’m just now building a dedicated frag tank so I wouldn’t know lol... in reef systems they work great but yeah they like to carry everything around ! Might try the mollies this time !

 

[Reefs and Geeks]

Looking into mollies now! that's an interesting idea for sure. blennies too. I always forget about fish as a CUC.

Mollies are also super cheap, so if they are good algae eaters I could put a small swarm of them in there for the price of a few snails haha. Will any color of molly do, or are black the best? how does one molly compare to a snail as far as algae eating ability?

 

[One Reefing Boi]

following with same questions

 

[ReeferBean]

What are the dimensions of your frag tank. If large enough, an algae eating tang would be my choice. My go to is a yellow tang, all I have had devour hair algae. Now that I have my large tank, all my tangs eat algae including bubble. Best for me for hair type algaes are the yellow and scopas.

 

[Camaro Show Corals]

Lots of snails

 

[Reefs and Geeks]

Lots of snails

Any particular type of snail, or just a variety of everything I can get? Is reef cleaners s good place to order from? They seem to have good prices.

Astraea?
Ceriths?
Hermits?
Nerite?

 

[Southpawblues]

I have around 30 astrea snails in my 60 gallon frag tank. They are making short work of the hair algae issue I had. They have been in the frag tank for only a week and over 60% of the hair algae is gone. What I most like is that they clean a frag plug CLEAN. I've had green hair algae actually growing off the actual zoa stalks and in between polyps and the snails remove that as well. They also do a good job cleaning in between the grates of the egg crate. Astrea's cannot right themselves like trochus snails can so I do a quick scan of the tank once a day to rescue any stranded snails.

I've only ordered from reef cleaners once and half the CUC arrived dead. Smelled really bad. Owner made it right though.

 

[John Genmel]

...

 

[Reefs and Geeks]

Thanks guys! I ended up ordering from Reefcleaners earlier this week and expect to get my snails next Wednesday or thursday. I ended up ordering 40 Astraea, 125 dwarf cerith, 30 Florida Cerith, 20 nassarius vibex, and 6 trochus snails. For now, they will be spread out between my 30 gallon frag tank and a 40 gallon section in my sump I'm using as a frag tank. In the near future, I'll be adding a 60 gallon frag tank and will move alot of them over to that.

I'm really looking forward to the frags and racks being cleaned by someone other than me. Worst chore I have now is a 2 hour weekly cleaning of all the frags with a toothbrush. I bought 4 astraea snails from my LFS to see how they would do and they seem to help, but are only making a small dent. Had them a couple days now and only had to right one of them once so far. I'll still check at least daily for tipped snails, but will be happy if they aren't constantly getting themselves knocked over. Flipping snails still sounds alot more appealing than manually cleaning frags for sure. I'll try to remember to take before and after pics so everyone can see how well they work. Will also have to see how reefcleaners is and count the snails received and see how many make the trip healthy. Took a fair amount of convincing to my wife for me to spend $100+ on snails so I'm really hoping they do a good job and prove their worth.

I was back and forth on hermits, but ultimately decided against them so there's nothing to kill my astreas before I have a chance to right them. I've had a few a long time ago and liked watching them roam around my rockwork, but just seemed too risky to add them with a bunch of snails.

 

[Duncan Tse]

Any update if the snails helped with the algae? Just set up a frag tank recently too and am looking to see if snails will help clean up some algae on the plugs

 

[spiraling]

Any update if the snails helped with the algae? Just set up a frag tank recently too and am looking to see if snails will help clean up some algae on the plugs

trochus are a good bet, turbo are larger.

 

[Reefs and Geeks]

Any update if the snails helped with the algae? Just set up a frag tank recently too and am looking to see if snails will help clean up some algae on the plugs

Yes, the snails I got are AMAZING! I've been blown away with how much of a difference there is with snails vs no clean up crew. Never again will I have a tank without a strong clean up crew of snails. To be fair, I did add a ridiculous amount of snails (around 500 astrea and cerith to my 125 gallon sump/frag grow out plus my 30 gallon frag tank), but they took it from something I was embarrassed enough that I felt I needed to take everything apart to clean any time someone come over to see it, which took hours. After adding the snails, the tank was virtually spotless within a few days and I haven't had to clean a frag or the glass since. It's so nice that I can now just grab my phone and take a picture without any prep at all to show off my frags.

I bought so many because of discounts at high volumes. I've been supplementing their diet with a fair amount of pellet food, and have been selling off some of the excess here and there with frags to local hobbyists. Not a huge money maker, but makes me feel good to help out, and I have too many now anyways.

 

[Duncan Tse]

Yes, the snails I got are AMAZING! I've been blown away with how much of a difference there is with snails vs no clean up crew. Never again will I have a tank without a strong clean up crew of snails. To be fair, I did add a ridiculous amount of snails (around 500 astrea and cerith to my 125 gallon sump/frag grow out plus my 30 gallon frag tank), but they took it from something I was embarrassed enough that I felt I needed to take everything apart to clean any time someone come over to see it, which took hours. After adding the snails, the tank was virtually spotless within a few days and I haven't had to clean a frag or the glass since. It's so nice that I can now just grab my phone and take a picture without any prep at all to show off my frags.

I bought so many because of discounts at high volumes. I've been supplementing their diet with a fair amount of pellet food, and have been selling off some of the excess here and there with frags to local hobbyists. Not a huge money maker, but makes me feel good to help out, and I have too many now anyways.

Wow thanks for the update and your tank is virtually spotless now!

Will have to put in an order of astrea trochus and ceriths soon

 

[zoaprince]

Snails always bulldozed through the frags I had in the substrate. It annoyed me having to readjust them constantly so I got rid of them. Just FYI in case you put frags in your sand bed

 

[Hallowhead]

Looking for an update on this, did snails ever die off? What did you think out the squad to?