Thank you for all the positive comments. Let me know if there's anything you would change about my tank. I'm always open to suggestions. In regards to my 35 gallon reef can anyone help decide what a need for a proper clean up crew? My tank is currently being taken over by green hair algae and red slime algae. Anything you can tell me would be appreciated.
We have several different types of snails in our tank that seem to take care of the growths you are describing. E also have blue legged hermit crabs, peppermint shrimps, and a blue star fish. The snails we have are
Bumble Bee Snails, Spiny Star Astraea, Banded Trochus Snails, Cerith Snails, Margarita Snail, and Nassarius Snails. Hope this helps
Hi. Thanks that helps a lot. I'm just wondering about the quantity of snails, crabs, etc.
Liveaquaria.com section on reef cleaners has a good chart for the numbers that should be used in tanks of different sizes. It also has package suggestions.
this is an example of one of the cleaner packages they offer. they do not ship to Canada :( However I used the information as a guide to create a cleaner crew with what I was able to get at either Big Al's or AquaValley.
Package Contents Quantity of species per
aquarium size (gallons)
30 55 75 100 125
Scarlet Hermit Crabs 5 10 15 20 25
Mexican Turbo Snails or
Margarita Snails or
Zebra Turbo Snails 10 20 30 40 50
Dwarf Red Tip Hermit or
Dwarf Yellow Tip Hermit or
Dwarf Zebra Hermit (Hawaii) 20 35 50 65 80
Since you asked the one thing I would do to the cichlid tank is get a background for it. If there is room to get behind and paint it that would be the best. Plain water based paint in black will make your fish pop. Barring that a purchased background taped into place. Again black IMO.
Regards Mike
If you're getting green hair algae and red cyano in your reef tank you probably have a problem with phosphates. Have you tested your parameters lately? If so could you share your results?
My test results are as follows
0 amonnia
0 nitrite
0 nitrate
8.1 ph
I unfortunately do not have a more extensive test kit. This problem started when I replaced my light. I replaced my light 62 watt coralife t5 with a 165 watt full spectrum led light.