Which hermits will be the most versatile?

[dtruitt]

I've got my 65G filled and I've started the cycling process. Another reefer in the area was kind enough to offer me his equipment and livestock since he is taking down his tank.

I put some of his live sand and rock in my refugium, and I tossed a few cocktail shrimp in the display tank to produce ammonia to help kick start the cycle. I'm facing a couple of relatively minor issues now though. 1. I didn't put the shrimp in a bag or bowl, so theres little bits of cocktail shrimp floating around the DT, and 2. The guy I'm acquiring this system from had a GHA issue and there are still a few bits of GHA on some of his rock.

I'd like to stock my tank (and possibly my refugium) with a few hermits to dispose of the shrimp remnants and any remaining GHA. I've been reading up on different hermits, and it seems like the zebras are the only hermits that will eat dead fish according to some of the sources I've checked. Are there any other hermits that would serve both of these roles? Can I expect that any old hermit crab will be happy to eat the remaining cocktail shrimp in addition to gha?

As far as the GHA goes, I ordered some chaeto which I am hoping will deplete the water of the nitrate and phosphate that GHA needs to thrive. We are planning on getting a lawnmower blenny once the the rockwork is in place, and if these measures dont completely eradicate the GHA, I understand that it's safe enough to turn the lights out for a couple of days to deprive the GHA of light.

Are there any other inexpensive, hardy critters that we can add early in the tanks life cycle to keep these potential issues in check?

We will be acquiring 5 - 10 hermits and snails from our new acquaintance's tank. I'm thinking we could safely add 5 hermits now without overpopulating the aquarium.

Thanks!

 

[DeepintheReef]

In my experience, nothing but a dollabella sea hate would eat gha. Ive been battling it for about a year in one of my tanks. Tried just about every critter that is supposed to eat it and those have been the only ones.

Since the tank is new I would recommend fluconazole to kill off the gha. For me it took about two weeks to see a noticeable difference and at four weeks there's only a few strands here and there that I've been manually removing. I plan on running it for another month to eradicate the gha.

Do some searches on the forum to find what works for you. It's hard to get control of gha once it gets going in your tank.

 

[dtruitt]

In my experience, nothing but a dollabella sea hate would eat gha. Ive been battling it for about a year in one of my tanks. Tried just about every critter that is supposed to eat it and those have been the only ones.

Since the tank is new I would recommend fluconazole to kill off the gha. For me it took about two weeks to see a noticeable difference and at four weeks there's only a few strands here and there that I've been manually removing. I plan on running it for another month to eradicate the gha.

Do some searches on the forum to find what works for you. It's hard to get control of gha once it gets going in your tank.

We will be relocating the entire donor tank to our place and slowly introduce its inhabitants into our DT. I think I'm comfortable with the idea of running fluconazole in the donor tank since we wont need to do any crazy water changes in the DT to get rid of it then.

Still do want to get our hands on some critters that will eat GHA though. It seems like nuisance algae is one of the most common issues people run into. Might as well stock the tank with appropriate clean up crew members to prevent things from going 0-60 in a snap of the fingers.

Thanks for the tip on the dollabella.