Yep. Forget any hope that singly or in a group they can defeat hair algae, make your sand white again, or render your skungy rock pristine. Nope. They have two jobs.
One of them is to poo. They eat --- yes, you may have to feed them, if your tank is too clean. And they poo. And THEIR poo is what keeps that sandbed going and lets it build strength enough to handle a fish without difficulty.
There is NO magical point at which a tank flips from uncyled to 'capable of handling multiple fish.' Its capability increases slowly. It's bacterial sex---or what passes for it: bacteria get fat and prosperous and divide. They clone themselves, one at a time.
Now once you do have fish, the CUC gets another job: cleaning up after inefficient eaters; and yet another: cleaning up a dead fish. They have help from the bacteria. You'll rarely see a dead fish: if a sandbed is 'hot' with biological activity, dead in the evening usually means gone by morning, and fish bones scatter fast when crabs and worms get to work.
Main thing is, when acquiring a CUC, is to make sure you're not buying a food chain---things that eat each other; and that you buy only as many as your tank can support. These 'cleaner package deals' are generally way overstocked. Start with a few snails and crabs and hope for worms from the rocks. And if the place is getting skungy, add some more, but again---cleanup of algae really isn't their primary job. It's poo. Feeding the bacteria who will increase in numbers to handle the really big job of taking care of waste in your tank. Plain and simple, bacteria do most of the job. That's what cycling is for.
One of them is to poo. They eat --- yes, you may have to feed them, if your tank is too clean. And they poo. And THEIR poo is what keeps that sandbed going and lets it build strength enough to handle a fish without difficulty.
There is NO magical point at which a tank flips from uncyled to 'capable of handling multiple fish.' Its capability increases slowly. It's bacterial sex---or what passes for it: bacteria get fat and prosperous and divide. They clone themselves, one at a time.
Now once you do have fish, the CUC gets another job: cleaning up after inefficient eaters; and yet another: cleaning up a dead fish. They have help from the bacteria. You'll rarely see a dead fish: if a sandbed is 'hot' with biological activity, dead in the evening usually means gone by morning, and fish bones scatter fast when crabs and worms get to work.
Main thing is, when acquiring a CUC, is to make sure you're not buying a food chain---things that eat each other; and that you buy only as many as your tank can support. These 'cleaner package deals' are generally way overstocked. Start with a few snails and crabs and hope for worms from the rocks. And if the place is getting skungy, add some more, but again---cleanup of algae really isn't their primary job. It's poo. Feeding the bacteria who will increase in numbers to handle the really big job of taking care of waste in your tank. Plain and simple, bacteria do most of the job. That's what cycling is for.
