Too early for this cleanup crew?

mstef · Jul 4, 2022

Help from western Nebraska. A few months ago we set up a 55 gallon, planning to be reef eventually but at the moment we had around 50 lbs of dry rock to start, a couple life rocks from petco (only store within 100 miles), dr Tim’s fishless cycle to kick things off. Then we quarantined and added a firefish goby and a green banded goby, and a month later a coral beauty and royal gramma and somewhere in the middle we added five blue leg hermits. Overall this has been about 3 1/2 months now. The light is a Chinese led, I know not great but it’s what we have for now. We didn’t put the light on until the last fish went in a couple weeks ago. Now we have the brown bloom happening and I’m wondering if it’s too early to add a diverse clean up crew - something along the lines of this https://www.reefcleaners.org/store/diverse-crew-55-gallon-detail. Is it too early for this? As far as filtration we have a canister and a skimmer going, plan to add a refugium at some point.

vetteguy53081 · Jul 4, 2022

mstef said:
Help from western Nebraska. A few months ago we set up a 55 gallon, planning to be reef eventually but at the moment we had around 50 lbs of dry rock to start, a couple life rocks from petco (only store within 100 miles), dr Tim’s fishless cycle to kick things off. Then we quarantined and added a firefish goby and a green banded goby, and a month later a coral beauty and royal gramma and somewhere in the middle we added five blue leg hermits. Overall this has been about 3 1/2 months now. The light is a Chinese led, I know not great but it’s what we have for now. We didn’t put the light on until the last fish went in a couple weeks ago. Now we have the brown bloom happening and I’m wondering if it’s too early to add a diverse clean up crew - something along the lines of this https://www.reefcleaners.org/store/diverse-crew-55-gallon-detail. Is it too early for this? As far as filtration we have a canister and a skimmer going, plan to add a refugium at some point.

As long as there is algae and similar food source, ok to pop some in. Be sure to Acvlimate well