Clean up Crew Alternatives

Jaco Schoeman

Jaco Schoeman

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Hey guys. I have asked this question on two threads as a post, but no one could answer. So i'm giving the question a bit more advertising...;)

We read recently and had a poll on CUC's that irritate our soft corals. Expert members like Reef Maniac and Anemone mentioned they do not keep any shrimp, hermits etc due to this reason.

My question is this then: If you take out cleaner shrimp, boxer shrimp, hermit crabs etc. what can you use in their place to do the same important and effective job that they do on the reef?

Who will dispose of all the excess meaty foods that gets stuck behind LR etc? Won't this become an issue if nothing is there to eat it?

:biggrin::biggrin::biggrin:
 
for meaty foods )especially in my nano) i use nassarius sp of snails and dont have shrimps. i woukld have also thought that a well matured tank with decebnt biological filtration and a good pop population\bristleworms, serpent stars, micro stars etc could easily replace a ' convensional' CUC of hermites and shrimps.


thoughts?
 
Brittle stars are great, and never bother anything in my tank. Hardly see them :(

My pair of boxing shrimps, don't seem to ever worry corals, although I have given them a nice big cave to live in, maybe when they have no hiding spots they start climbing all over the corals ??

Concerning hermits, can't say, I have noticed them annoying corals, and I have over 50 in my system.

At present I would say I have around 40/50 snails (depending on Mantis consumption) and they get annoyed by the hermits more than the corals :whistling:
 
Nemos Janitor said:
Those big green brittle stars eat turbo snails big time.
Click to expand...

And fish, nickname - green death

Green_brittle.jpg


Source: Seastars - Marine Aquariums of South Africa - wiki

These are good guys :)

Banded_brittle.jpg

Source: Seastars - Marine Aquariums of South Africa - wiki
 
So basically sea stars are a good replacement for meat eating cuc members if I understand you correctly?
 
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