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Who is favorite member of your CUC? (1 Viewer)

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Subsea

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Clean Up Crews are what I enjoy most about planning out a balanced ecosystem that operates on auto-pilot: Dynamic Equilibrium.

What is your favorite clean-up crew member , or what is something that one of them has done that makes you like them a lot. I like Sally Lightfoot Crab. He being “fleet of foot“ has eluded close up pictures.


The Sally Lightfoot Crab has long been used as a "tank janitor" to help clean the substrate and rocks in saltwater aquariums. As an omnivore, the Sally Lightfoot is the ultimate scavenger, consuming detritus, uneaten food, algae and everything else in its path, with the noted exception of living corals. When this crab gets larger and more aggressive, it will also attack and eat small fish and invertebrates.


The Sally Lightfoot Crab has a brown body, with orange to yellow rings on the legs.


Actually classified as a shore crab, however, it is less likely than the other genera to go on land. The "true" Sally Lightfoot species is the Grapsus grapsus found in the Galapagos Islands, which most likely won't be the one you find in fish stores. In the wild, this flat crab greatly prefers to live in areas with a lot of rocks with crevices that it can hide in. In an aquarium, it also does best where there is a lot of live rock with crevices and gaps that it can crawl into when it wants to hide, which is most of the time.


The Sally Lightfoot Crab is considered to be a Reef Tank Safe Janitor as it does not bother corals but does a great job of eating Green Hair Algae, detritus and uneaten food.

PS: After I read this link, I now know where mollies in mixed garden Caribbean lagoon went.
 

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I only do a 10 percent water change every 2 months so clean up crew is important to me. Ever since I was a little boy I loved starfish. Thing is that I have a lot of live rock and when I vacuum live rock scrambles all over. Starfish and others can get trapped and die. So now the only star fish/ clean up crew I can have is Asteria. I also like bristle worms. They sure do a good job cleaning...ya they are ugly but hide during the day. Do they harm corals? So far I have not seen any evidentce of that in my tank.
 
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Bristle worms and Nassarius snails handle uneaten food. When I feed, opportunistic carnivore snails pop up out of sandbed making my 3 year grandson laugh.


Nassarius Vibex Snail
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The nassarius vibex snail is a small carrion snail, which means it only feeds on dead or decaying animals. It's a useful tank cleaner as it has a very large appetite and will consume any uneaten food or dead organisms in the aquarium. This particular snail will not eat macro or micro algae and will not prey upon other live snails or invertebrates in the aquarium. We recommend only a few per tank because they need to be well fed. Sizes range from 1/8" to about 1/4" long.

I only do a 10 percent water change every 2 months so clean up crew is important to me. Ever since I was a little boy I loved starfish. Thing is that I have a lot of live rock and when I vacuum live rock scrambles all over. Starfish and others can get trapped and die. So now the only star fish/ clean up crew I can have is Asteria. I also like bristle worms. They sure do a good job cleaning...ya they are ugly but hide during the day. Do they harm corals? So far I have not seen any evidentce of that in my tank.
 

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I may have mentioned this before but I get a kick watching the cuc doing its thing. I have a Halloween crab, fighting conch and some other crabs that are black but with orange accent trim. Looking pretty fly. The speed that snails move is astounding sometimes. I enjoy watching the cuc as much as everything else in the tank.
 
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I may have mentioned this before but I get a kick watching the cuc doing its thing. I have a Halloween crab, fighting conch and some other crabs that are black but with orange accent trim. Looking pretty fly. The speed that snails move is astounding sometimes. I enjoy watching the cuc as much as everything else in the tank.
“The speed that snails move is astounding sometimes.”

If you were being pursued by a hermit crab that wanted to eat your flesh and use your skin for its new house, you would move fast also.
 

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I have a love-hate relationship with the cleaner shrimp - for the most part they're great, but when I'm trying to feed the LPS corals and they're stealing the food from the corals' mouths, they can be annoying. When I had a velvet outbreak, the fish were literally lining up to get cleaned.

I enjoy the Stomatella snails - ugly but cool. My wife calls them "speedy snails" because they do move surprisingly fast. I have tan ones and black ones. It sucks that they have to die sometimes, but when they do, the inside of the shell is stunning.
 
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I have a love-hate relationship with the cleaner shrimp - for the most part they're great, but when I'm trying to feed the LPS corals and they're stealing the food from the corals' mouths, they can be annoying. When I had a velvet outbreak, the fish were literally lining up to get cleaned.

I enjoy the Stomatella snails - ugly but cool. My wife calls them "speedy snails" because they do move surprisingly fast. I have tan ones and black ones. It sucks that they have to die sometimes, but when they do, the inside of the shell is stunning.
Add Peppermint & Coral Banded Shrimp and include Emerald Crabs to that category. I like these snails I get from


Nerite Snail
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Nerites are useful algae feeders that will readily consume diatoms, cynobacteria and some species of hair algae. The only downside is that they are sub tidal snails that live out of the water between tides. Refugiums and aquariums should be fitted with a rim or lid to prevent escape. They can survive for days in a dry habitat as they store water in their shells, so they can be safely added back if they happen to crawl out. Overall they are very hardy snails and can easily right themselves if they fall over. Sizes vary from medium to large ranging from 1/2" to 3'4". This snail is sold in lots of 10.
,
 

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I have a love-hate relationship with the cleaner shrimp - for the most part they're great, but when I'm trying to feed the LPS corals and they're stealing the food from the corals' mouths, they can be annoying. When I had a velvet outbreak, the fish were literally lining up to get cleaned.

I enjoy the Stomatella snails - ugly but cool. My wife calls them "speedy snails" because they do move surprisingly fast. I have tan ones and black ones. It sucks that they have to die sometimes, but when they do, the inside of the shell is stunning.

Stomatellas are super cool. Something prehistoric about them and the way the move about. The shrimps are a double edged sword. They are great cleaners but I have found mine tearing into a nem so they ceased to exist.
 
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Stomatellas are super cool. Something prehistoric about them and the way the move about. The shrimps are a double edged sword. They are great cleaners but I have found mine tearing into a nem so they ceased to exist.
Shrimps “ceased to exist”. 🙀. Did you eat them.

I sometimes use red led for night vision when shrimps & pods are out foraging. Especially interesting was watching Peppermint Shrimp ingest tentacles of Aptasia. While I have never seen Peppermint Shrimp injury other anemones, they will pull food from any anemone.
 
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Subsea

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Hippo Tang at 10 years in tank is a pig when it comes to groceries. Not only does he get fresh live seaweed from other tanks pruning, he aggressively eats on red tree sponge, as does lawnmower blenny.
Lights on for 1 hour and I got a picture of lawn mower blennie next to sponge feeding zone
 

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We do have occasional get togethers and collection trips. We also have a backstage tour of moody gardens aquarium that will be a cool outing.

i like the sponges as they certainly do bring a very cool vibe to a reef tank imo. you Say the tangs eat them Though. I’m afraid any I add won’t get established.
 
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Subsea

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We do have occasional get togethers and collection trips. We also have a backstage tour of moody gardens aquarium that will be a cool outing.

i like the sponges as they certainly do bring a very cool vibe to a reef tank imo. you Say the tangs eat them Though. I’m afraid any I add won’t get established.
This is the first tang that I have seen do this. Angel fish eat sponges but I have never had tanks big enough for mature Angels. I have had numerous Drawf Angels and none of them grazed on sponges.

I just did get this photosynthetic Blue Sponge last week. Bob Goemans described this species 30 years ago. I think he is wrong on light intensity. I trust Hunter at Aquadpme and I am maintaining 50 PAR.


Collospongia auris​

Cambie & Kernan, 1990​

Blue Ear Sponge​

Likely Reef Tank Suitable
Likely Fish-Only Tank Suitable
Range: Indo-West Pacific Ocean

Natural Environment: Inhabits fringing reefs where it seems to prefer calm, but highly turbid waters.

General Husbandry: Rarely seen in the tropical home aquarium trade.



There is some thought this species differs from almost all other sponge species as it may do better under moderate lighting such as PAR 250 - 300. Nevertheless, it hails from highly turbid waters where it probably receives most of its nutritional needs from filter feeding surrounding waters.

It also appears to be a fast growing, possibly an invasive species, although quite attractive.

Bottom-line, until its needs are clearly established, placement in moderately lit areas and fed once daily with preserved commercial phytoplankton and zooplankton products, or that of animal and plant powders that produce suspended products in the bulk waters should suffice in keeping it in a healthy condition.

Does not ship well, but if you get a healthy piece, it will fair well in the aquarium.

Taxonomy:


  • Kingdom: Animalia
    Phylum: Porifera
    Class: Demospongiae
    Subclass: Keratosa
    Order: Dictyoceratida
    Family: Thorectidae
    Genus: Collospongia
 

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Subsea

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Some ”problems with CUC” in 30G mixed garden lagoon.

Sally Lightfoot moved to big tank.
 

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Subsea

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My Fav is Aiptasia.

Multiples and soaks up excess nutrients
This reef rubble with small Aptasia was soaked in 12% hydrogen peroxide for three hours with all green algae bleached cleaned but Aptasia survived.

NOTE: The slime coat of Aptasia protects them from oxidation by peroxide that requires a toothbrush or injection needle for spot eradication. It is for that reason I use a 10 minute dip in a 10% solution of 3% hydrogen peroxide as sanitation protocol when bringing in suspect coral frags. For my purposes, diver collected live rock is spot treated only after inspection with manual removal as preferred first phase of sanitation.
 

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