Clean up crew.

[shalegac]

Just curious as to what if any clean up crews people have in their Nano/pico, and what size your tank is. Why do you have what you have?

Curently I have two pepperment shrimp, 1 cleaner shrimp, 2 astrea, and 2 red legged hermits in my 10 gallon. Cleaner shrimp is for my clowns, astreas for rock and glass, pepperemts were for my glass annenomes that I had and now hopfully I could get them to breed, and hermmits for any algea they may find.

In my 1 gallon pico I have 3 blue legged hermits, 1 nassirus, and 1 purple spounge of some sort, it was a hitchhiker and have yet to identify it although it is causing no trouble.

How about you guys?

 

[Len]

In my last 10 gallon nano, I had 6 Astreas, 2 Turbos, 2 Trochus, 1 Abalone, 1 brittle star (unknown species), a tiger cuke, and a fire shrimp. Basically, I tried to diversify as much as I could in such a small tank. I started with a dozen scarlet hermits too, but they died really quickly for some reason and I never bothered to replace them.

 

[brandon4291]

I used to like blue-legged hermits but they crawled on my hydnophora frag one night and dislodged it, then my eunicid worm stole it back into the rock crevice and I never saw it again. On that note I removed them never to return, but I do have a question for those still using these hermits: I saw mine pick around on the rock surfaces, but never really saw them physically remove hair algae strands do you notice your hermits removing algae or do they more often pick through the detritus found in the nooks and crannies? I got to thinking that maybe they weren't worth their weight in ammonia if they weren't going to actually remove the algae, but then again maybe I was impatient. I guess my question is: has anyone actually seen the tiny blue-legged hermits tear off and eat algae strands> if not, what animal have you seen that actually eats them or tears them off the rock surface (besides tangs of course!)

I consider my copepods the clean up crew for the 1 gallon reefs!

 

[lantos]

I have actually seem my hermits eat hair algea, they have cleaned it up in a few spots.

I started with 1 dozen hermits, and i am down to 11, not sure what happened to #12, I think he was eaten by his mates..


--chris

 

[Anonymous]

I have Stomatella varia, bristleworms, one pea sized blue legged hermit, two nassaurius snails, and a lot of cerith snails. I think a cuke, unless very small, would starve in such a small volume.

 

[cal3v]

Matt were you still interested in the maxima?