Agatheron
Aquarium Advice Regular
My family is working on our Nuvo Mini 38 gallon tank. So far, so good. It has been operating for well over a month now with live rock, and had cycled very quickly. I've been slowly adding clean up crew to the tank, but now have a population of about 33 total critters purchased, plus the hitchhikers that came in on the live rock.
So here's how it looks:
15 red tipped hermit crabs
1 Halloween (oranges striped) hermit crab
7 trochus snails
5 Zebra Turbo Snails
2 Emerald Crabs
1 peppermint shrimp
1 Pacific cleaner shrimp
In addition to this our most significant hitchhikers are three Rock flower anemones. We had one aiptaisia, but looks like I was successful in getting rid of it.
This clean up crew has virtually eliminated any green hair algae, and have picked the rocks fairly clean. The glass still gets buildup of green algae that I usually scrape off once every 2 days. We are well past any diatom blooms now. All told things are going well.
At this point I've noticed that the anemones are balling up more frequently, and I am beginning to wonder if the clean up crew is doing so well that I might need to start adding some meaty food to the tank. We are still a few weeks away from adding corals or vertibrate fish. I'd like to add an echinoderm of some sort, but I've been advised that an urchin may not be the best as they eat Coraline algae. in the midst of this, I also wonder about the bio load, given how many critters are already in the tank, and what I need to be careful as we move into the next stage of our tank's development.
Any advice? We are greatly enjoying this.
So here's how it looks:
15 red tipped hermit crabs
1 Halloween (oranges striped) hermit crab
7 trochus snails
5 Zebra Turbo Snails
2 Emerald Crabs
1 peppermint shrimp
1 Pacific cleaner shrimp
In addition to this our most significant hitchhikers are three Rock flower anemones. We had one aiptaisia, but looks like I was successful in getting rid of it.
This clean up crew has virtually eliminated any green hair algae, and have picked the rocks fairly clean. The glass still gets buildup of green algae that I usually scrape off once every 2 days. We are well past any diatom blooms now. All told things are going well.
At this point I've noticed that the anemones are balling up more frequently, and I am beginning to wonder if the clean up crew is doing so well that I might need to start adding some meaty food to the tank. We are still a few weeks away from adding corals or vertibrate fish. I'd like to add an echinoderm of some sort, but I've been advised that an urchin may not be the best as they eat Coraline algae. in the midst of this, I also wonder about the bio load, given how many critters are already in the tank, and what I need to be careful as we move into the next stage of our tank's development.
Any advice? We are greatly enjoying this.
