Best glass cleaning animal?

shred5

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There really is no "animal" that's going to keep your glass clean enough where you don't need to scrape it off. I need to clean mine once or twice a week, so it's really not an issue to spend 5 minutes a week to keep the glass clean. Your flipper is your best and really only option in keeping your glass clean.


Agreed animals will leave tracks or pick but nothing will do nearly as well as a scrapper. It basically one of those things if you do not want to do it probably the wring hobby for you.

It can be done allot less frequently by controlling nutrients. I have several tanks that actually rarely need cleaning of the glass.

Another thing is my bare bottom tanks seem to need the glass cleaned allot more.
 

Laith

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A human with a flipper or magnafloat works best in my experience.

Spot on. There is no CUC that can clean the glass as you would want. All snails or any other creature will do is leave trails on your glass which actually makes the algae on the glass more obvious and visible...

Elbow grease is what works best unfortunately. I have a three meter long tank and wish it could be otherwise but...

In a strange way I find it relaxing to clean the glass manually, at least most of the time! ;Happy
 

Townes_Van_Camp

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Spot on. There is no CUC that can clean the glass as you would want. All snails or any other creature will do is leave trails on your glass which actually makes the algae on the glass more obvious and visible...

Elbow grease is what works best unfortunately. I have a three meter long tank and wish it could be otherwise but...

In a strange way I find it relaxing to clean the glass manually, at least most of the time! ;Happy
Honestly, all of the time spent manually cleaning glass, syphoning gravel, windexing glass(never spray the glass), cleaning salt creep off the 8mm edge of a rimless, all of it makes the time viewing it worth the work.
I’ll gladly clean for two hours to earn the 30 min of viewing perfection.

On nights off I may spend up to two hours manually doting on the tank. In reality I don’t have to spend more than 15 minutes making it look too top so long as I stay on top of the task.
 

Patman

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Humans. Other non animal options; bacteria, algae scrubbers, UV sterilizers, refugiums, increased flow to the glass, and reduced lighting intensity or shorten the photoperiod will all extend the time before the human eventually has to come in and clean the glass.

Snails and other inverts are not capable of keeping your glass clean unfortunately
 

A worm with high fashion and practical utility: Have you ever kept feather dusters in your reef aquarium?

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