Is My Cleanup Crew Large Enough?

[justonwo]

I have a 90 gallon reef tank with several fish and quite a bit of coral in a deep sand bed. Looking at the "clean up crew packs" on liveaquria.com I get the sense that my CUC is grossly undersized for my tank. I currently have:

2 cleaner shrimp
1 peppermint shrimp
1 conch snail
2-3 misc snails that I rarely see
10 hermit crabs, mostly red legged
1 enormous brittle star
6 Nassarius snails

I'm thinking I may be understocked in the crab and snail department. Am I missing something obvious? I'm looking to keep my sand bed clean, keep algae under control, and clean up detritus to keep nitrates low.

 

[azbigjohn]

Well, how is your nitrates and algae?

Most "cleaner packs" are grossly oversized. If you add too many, they all starve.

I would certainly consider a few more snails, although with hermits, you may not see your snails because the hermits took their shells (after having lunch on the snails).

How old is your tank?

 

[justonwo]

Algae is copious and nitrates are high. I can never seem to get nitrates down to a manageable level no matter how much I skimp on food and how much I skim. That's why I'm thinking perhaps my CUC is a little skimpy.

 

[ReeferReefer]

More cuc won't help with nitrates as your shrimp, brittle star and nassarius are already doing plenty of scavenging.

 

[Catchemall]

I'd go for snails if anything but like mentioned your tank will balance out with its crew size. I certainly wouldn't do one of those packages way too many creatures. Crabs are pretty mean and opportunistic too . More snails less crabs.

 

[Bunnee911]

Let's look into gfo and some 30% water changes. I use Red Sea Nopox.

 

[stede]

Im thinking to much already. How big are your rocks on the sand bed. If to big change it to small dense sand...nitrates couls come from there.

 

[stede]

And yes water changes

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

+1. Don't trust crabs.
Keep in mind even if the crabs eat it it's still in the tank. Just smaller. Even if you do get your nitrates down you'll still have to manually remove a lot of it. One there's little food it relies on PhotoSynth. And the little bit o Po in the rock
I use a little tool brush