Cleanup Crew Supplemental Feeding

[DEadsCSU]

Once my new cleanup crew has done their duty and fully cleaned the tank over the next few months, what's the most ideal food for them? I bought the 125+ gallon Ultimate Algae Attack Pack from liveaquaria. Thx!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[miPapareef]

I bought the smallest build your own crew from LA and they arrived on Wednesday. Today I'm looking at completely stripped clean 65# of rocks in my tank. Specifically the 10 banded trochus snails leave a 1/2" bare trail behind themselves and they are fast for a snail.

Very curious what the answers will be. My first thought is to put a free to good home sign on the local forum.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[WatDatThing]

I don't feed mine anything and I don't intentionally over feed my fish so there will be left over for them either. The only snails that die on my are trochus. I stopped buying them.

Sent from my Moto G (4) using Tapatalk

 

[AlSimmons]

Instead of feeding them I would just let the tank balance out the population for you. If some of these creatures happen to die due to starvation so be it. Once you start feeding them they no longer function as janitors IMO, now they're pets. That CUC package you bought just may have been too much.

 

[benjammin03]

Do the dead critters harm the tank? Sometimes they are hard to notice right away.

 

[AlSimmons]

Do the dead critters harm the tank? Sometimes they are hard to notice right away.

If a lot of the snails, hermits etc died at the same time it could foul up the water, but you'll probably just end up seeing CUC members cleaning up CUC members. This is why a lot of people add their CUC in small quantities at a time. Two or three snails here, two or three there etc.

 

[Dr. Reef]

CUC packs are over-rated in my experience. i wouldnt buy what websites recommend for your tank size. i would buy only 25% of recommendation as they will do the job and rest will die. its best to add small and slow and add as per needed. eventually there will be not enough food for the CUC and some will die. Over time tanks get cleaner and cleaner (if one is maintaining them properly) which leaves less for the CUC.

 

[DEadsCSU]

CUC packs are over-rated in my experience. i wouldnt buy what websites recommend for your tank size. i would buy only 25% of recommendation as they will do the job and rest will die. its best to add small and slow and add as per needed. eventually there will be not enough food for the CUC and some will die. Over time tanks get cleaner and cleaner (if one is maintaining them properly) which leaves less for the CUC.

Assuming that you want to keep any from dying, what do you supplement for food to keep them all alive? That's the main question I have.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Dr. Reef]

in order to keep them alive u will need to give them algae which means to keep the nutrients up and parameters like nitrates and phos to be a bit higher so your tank keeps algae.

 

[DEadsCSU]

There's got to be a method to feed them with certain external sources of food, not tank grown algae.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[AnnaCassandra]

The thing is, you don't really want to do that, their purpose is to help regulate the nutrients in your tank and even if you don't see any algae, it's there, adding food is really unnecessary unless you have WAY too many CUC for your tank size.

 

[benjammin03]

Thanks for the info!