Choosing a best CUC, need advice

[waynefort]

I recently looking for the best CUC for my tank after a death of my purple linkia starfish, my turbo cannot handle to much algae an detrius on his own, i also visit a few local reef shop and they has a various of sea critter for clean up the tank,there is a list of CUC that highly recommended by our LSF:

Coral banded shrimp
skunk cleaner shrimp
peppermint shrimp
Emerald crab ( called as green crab by LFS)
Sand rift starfish
red starfish ( possibly indica or milleporela)
serpent brittle star
Sea urchin ( tuxedo)
Blenny( lownmower and midas)
Narcissus snail
Hermit crab ( various color)
lettuce sea slug

This is my list that higly recommended by the LFS, but before i pick up one or two, i have to make sure that they are hardy , and very efficient enough to be a janitor in my tank and more important, they have to be Reef safe. I don't want to waste a money and lost another critter as some of them are expensive ane very rare. So , how about you guy, did you have any experience with the listed species? I heard cleaner shrimp sometime annoying fish by throw as sand at them LOL

Equipment : dolphin 20 gallon tank, fluval c4 hang on filter, mini skimmer, mini wavemaker, 20 watt led lighting, 4.5 kg fresh live rock, live sand, seaskimz auto topoff

livestock : ocellaris clownfish( mated pair), 1 yellowtail damsel,1 bicolor dottyback, 1 button polyps, 1 neon green fing coral, 1 colt coral , 1 riccordae yuma mushroom
















This a list of highly recommended species i

 

[badbreath]

First of all don't buy any starfish or slugs.

I'd check out what available at reefcleaners then get that...through them or your lfs.

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[norfolkgarden]

Definitely no on the coral banded shrimp and the sand sifting star or the Emerald crabs.
Coral banded is nasty sand sifting star will die and personal preference on the emerald crab.

One or two Nassarius snails, a small brittlestar preferably a harlequin brittle star a few small turbos under three quarters of an inch, a few dwarf cerith snails.

The Tuxedo will get huge eventually and steal most of your small frags.
If they are under one inch they are pretty cool and you can keep it for a year or two.

We have 5 dwarf zebra hermit crabs and 2 Scarlet hermit crabs and a half dozen blue legs.

All of the hermit crabs will eventually kill your snails for their shells unless you put a bunch of empty shells in slightly larger sizes in your tank.

We have 2 Black brittle Stars, three Harlequin serpent Stars a Red Serpent star and a purple serpent star and we need to make sure they get sufficient food in our 75 gallon tank. oops

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[norfolkgarden]

You can keep a skunk cleaner shrimp and a fire blood shrimp in the same tank if it is large enough. For all the fish cleaner stuff the scale of the cleaner to the fish normally matters. The fish are much more comfortable with cleaners that are smaller than they are.
We have a cleaner shrimp the blood red fire shrimp and several neon gobies.


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