Clean up crew for 30 gal reef

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tooldini

Aquarium Advice Activist
Joined
Feb 27, 2005
Messages
154
Location
Lasalle, mi USA
I am wondering how many snails and crabs I should have for clean up in my 30 gal reef. Things are looking really shitty lately and I am trying to clean up a cyano problem. I only have about 5 crabs,an emerald crab, and maybe 5 snails.

thanks
Jeff
 
I have about 13 nass snails and about 13 astrea snails. And had two hermits but one is MIA. Oh and I have an emerald crab.

They do a very good job keeping things clean.

On another note cyano is cuased by water quality and or flow. I had some cyano in my 10gallon and added another PH and never saw it again. Some say tap water will cause cyano outbreak but I use tap water and have no problems so far in the 30 gallon.
 
As Civicman pointed out, a cleanup crew will have little effect on cyano. I also had cyano in my tank for a while and then adjusted the direction of my powerheads to eliminate dead spots and it started to clear up. High phosphates and DOM will also contribute to the cyano so RO/DI water is helpful.

Another thing you may want to consider is your lighting. Old lights start to change their emission spectra where they start promoting nuissance algae growth. I also started to see less cyano after changing all my PC bulbs.

HTH
 
Thanks you guys. I am pretty sure it is my well water that was causing it. there is so much now that I am having a hard time getting rid of it. I finally went against my thoughts and got some Ultra life red slime remover. I am so upset that I did use it. The stuff did not die and turn black like I was told. I used it as instructions said and even did it twice. The stuff is still there and I cleaned most rocks with toothbrush, turned off skimmer, cleaned all power heads, changed filters in powerfilter. Today my fish don't look very good and most of my corals are very upset looking :( The tank is 1 year old now and so are the PC bulbs. I have started using conditioned city water, but since the cyano is still in there it doesn't seem to do any good. I may have to remove some of my substrate or something.. Thanks for the advice

Jeff
 
Sorry to hear about your tank. I understand where you're coming from with the cyano problem. It can really be a killer. I bought an RO/DI system off ebay for around $100 and it's well worth it. I also resorted to a cyano medication at one point but didn't use the one you tried. I used Boyd's Chemi Clean as this was the one everyone recommended. It's not a cure but it did cut it down after a few days. Just do a bunch of water changes and get flow into those dead spots and hopefully you'll come out of this okay.

Good luck
 
Not completely sure but for some reason 6 months seems to ring a bell. Maybe someone else can chime in for that one.

I don't know what kind of lights you have but I have the coralife aqualight with 4x65watt lights. Each of those bulbs usually sells for $25 to $30 at the LFS but I got all four of mine for $32 on ebay. With that kind of pricing I don't mind replacing them every 6 months.
 
thanks I will replace them in a few weeks I think. Most everything in the tank still looks bad and it has to be due to the redslime remover.

Jeff
 
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