Help! Need Cleanup Crew, $200 limit, New 180gal LOTS of PICS

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1brent1

Aquarium Advice Activist
Joined
Oct 27, 2005
Messages
109
Location
Amherst, NY
First, your time is greatly appreciated and needed please!! Sorry for the long post, took me forever to put everything together.

Can someone please help me hopefully spend $200 or less on a really good cleanup crew. Saltwater is fairly new to me and I don't know anyone that owns a saltwater tank so I'm going to rely on all you good folks!

I was looking for a detailed shopping list (what, how many & from where) from either http://reeftopia.com or http://KeysCritters.com (I was told they'd be the best to order from unless you know of someone else)

person preferences-
I was also hoping I'd get some stuff that would be interesting and cool to look at, (some shrimps look cool I think). Also, I don't really like the look of tanks that have a million snails crawling all over so what ever you think will get me by if possible. Oh, my son likes those blue leg hermit crabs and star fish if they'd be ok to add to the list?

Tank-
180 gal 40 gal sump, 220 lbs live rock and 2" live sand bed.
Looking to do mixed reef/fish. Tank has had water in if for about 3 weeks now. Cycled in just 2 to 3 days from the 220 lbs of live rock I added that was soaking in my basement for 4 months while I built the stand/canopy/setup. I already have 3 Blue Chromis, 2 Clowns (perks) in the tank. A week ago everything in the tank started to turn orangish and algae is starting to grow everywhere. Couple links/photos of stuff growing already in the tank -
http://partydamage.com/fishtank/19.jpg
http://partydamage.com/fishtank/18.jpg
http://partydamage.com/fishtank/22.jpg
http://partydamage.com/fishtank/21.jpg

Here's a couple photos, the last one was taken today along with the ones above. (still setting things up, internal waterflow, refuge, background, etc.)

11.jpg

17.jpg
 
check out liveaquaria.com , marinedepotlive.com and saltwaterfish.com
 
hackteck said:
check out liveaquaria.com , marinedepotlive.com and saltwaterfish.com
add them to the list above if they would be better to order from, thanks. I was hoping I could place the order today, tank is changing fast. Please read the [bold text] above, thanks!
 
i would look at liveaquaria.com they seem to have the best for clean ups around. But thats just my thought. I would get at least 10 turbo snails and about 30 hermits i like the zebra's and the blues. then some nassarius snails maybe 15 or so a couple cleaner shrimp. I think would put 4 or 5 scarlet reef hermits to. A sand sifting star would do you good to. thats what i would do for a tank like that. It would give you a good diversity of things. Plus i think those cleaner packages have a few things in them that are not needed. well good shopping and have fun.
 
Thanks guys for all your feed back!!

After doing some more reading, hows this sound?
2 Scarlet Skunk Cleaner Shrimp
2 Serpant Stars
8 Nassarius Vibex Snails
4 Mexican Turbos
2 Fighting conch
14 Cerith Snails
8 Nerite
5 Margarita Snails
2-6 Maroon Hermits

now I just need to find one site that sells them all!

P.S. Brian, lights are awesome, thanks for shopping them out for me!
 
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