What are your favorite critters to add as a cleanup crew?

I'd appreciate your input on this.

I got a 90 g tank with about 120 lbs of LR. and about 3" of sand. It'll be a full lblown reef tank. I don't have a cleanup crew in there yet, but I'm slowly looking into what i should add in there.

What would you guys purchase to keep your tank clean? Which snails, crabs, stars, sea cucumbers? etc etc etc ...

Thanks!

c

I like to do blue leg hermits (they are nice looking and fairly peaceful) a good mix of snails and cleaner shrimp. A sand sifting star would be good down the road once your system matures.

I agree with Blake. The only difference with my CUC is I use a diamond goby instead of a sand sifting star. They serve the same purpose but I prefer a fish to a star.

I also go with the diamond goby but i think my cuc is pretty over kill
32 gallon
20-30 blue leg hermits
2 red leg crabs
1 sally lightfoot
5 nasurius snail
5 turbos
2 mexican turbos
yellow sea cucumber
5 mystery hermits "3x size blue leg"

As long as they get enough food, it sounds good to me.

In my 70g FOWLR I have 2 sally lightfoots(love these guys...they do a great job), also have 3 emerald crabs(also great crew to have.....constantly picking away) and about 15 blue leg hermits and tons of snails, next on my list is a couple pepermint shrimp(to keep the aiptasia in check), and when I move everything to my 300g I'll get a few more of each of the above mentioned, as well as a few cleaner shrimp.

i have about 100 blue legs and 4-5 zebra crabs. i think my favorite would be my pistol shrimp, and as much as hes a pain my engineer goby.

Just have a quicky.....any help would be great. Is it ok to have a few different species of shrimp in one tank. I was think of having a skunk cleaner and pistol shrimp to go with a yellow watchmen gobie. I was also thinking of a banded shrimp but that will be in the future.

i have an 80g and at one time i had 2 cleaners 2 peppermints and 1 coral banded shrimp and 2 blood shrimp they were all fine... now if i add anything i have to watch out cause my hawkfish or trigger will go after them. i still have the coral baned and a pistol...

R33f3r wrote:Just have a quicky.....any help would be great. Is it ok to have a few different species of shrimp in one tank. I was think of having a skunk cleaner and pistol shrimp to go with a yellow watchmen gobie. I was also thinking of a banded shrimp but that will be in the future.

Mixing shrimp is ok for the most part but avoid adding a coral banded with other shrimp as they tend to be aggressive with other shrimp species.

lettuce nudibranch, im not sure how well crabs will get along with them but good algae eaters (or so ive read)

after i added 10 golf balls (turbo snails) into the tank i can NOT SEE any hair algea on the rock glass or heaters, they really did do a great job...

Thanks for all the replies, I will keep them in mind.

I love my emerald crab. It is a great scavenger. I have bubble algae and it has just started eating it.

I have peppermint shrimp, cleaner shrimp, certih, narcissus and astrea snails. Also have red scarlet hermits, blue legged hermits and mexican red tip hermits. I like the red scarlets the best. They seem peaceful.

Unfortunately my blue legged hermits love to kill off my astreas for their shells even though there are plenty of empty shells in the tank to chose from.

I just had a huge outbreak of cyano in my 75 gal and HA.. so I bought a cleaner pack from Dr Foster and Smith, got 15 scarlet hermits, 30 blue tipped hermits, 30 mexican turbos and 3 abalone and man did they do a great job.. here is the link... but I must say.. the Abalone are creepy looking.. lol

http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/prod_display.cfm?c=420+2732+494&pcatid=494

Are you in Canada or the USA Sambrinar? According to their website Liveaquaria Doesn't ship to us in Canada.

Hey Frosty..No they don't..I have been trying to get my bluespot jawfish from them, but they don't ship here unfortunately..

Will anemones eat hermit crabs and other members of the cleaning crew, or vise versa. I wanted to add crabs etc to my tank housing my pink tipped anemone but wasn't sure how each would get along together. How about serpeant stars as well?
Thanks

Shannon *Admin* wrote:Hey Frosty..No they don't..I have been trying to get my bluespot jawfish from them, but they don't ship here unfortunately..

That's what I thought. Thanks for confirming that.

spankmeister wrote:Will anemones eat hermit crabs and other members of the cleaning crew, or vise versa. I wanted to add crabs etc to my tank housing my pink tipped anemone but wasn't sure how each would get along together. How about serpeant stars as well?
Thanks

I have all of the members of the cleanup crew you mentioned in with my Three large RBTA's and they all get along just fine. I wouldn't be too worried if I were you.

I have red & blue legged hermits with my BTA and never had a problem..

2Frosty4u wrote:Are you in Canada or the USA Sambrinar? According to their website Liveaquaria Doesn't ship to us in Canada.

Yep US.. but I was really putting that on there so you could see what I had and thought was an excellent clean up crew... Shame they don't ship to Canada.. sorry

Brenda

They do have some really nice stuff on Liveaquaria that I know many local reefers would love to purchase but there's that darn Border That keeps getting in the way...lol
It seem's like I never have enough clean crew roaming around my tank and this thread makes me think I'll be heading to the local LFS's this weekend for a few new additions. For some strange reason when I checked on my reef this morning the smaller of two Emerald Crabs I've had for some time was laying on the sandbed with his claws in the air....go figure.

2Frosty4u wrote:For some strange reason when I checked on my reef this morning the smaller of two Emerald Crabs I've had for some time was laying on the sandbed with his claws in the air....go figure.

Funny we found mine just like that last week.. must be the season.. lol