CUC question

[aydemir]

Hi guys,

I wanted to add to my CUC. I've been off at school away from the tanks for a while, and some old members of the CUC died, and there is a brownish/red slime algae (new), hair algae, and bubble algae problem. I'm wondering what the best CUC additions would be to tackle these. Tank is a 10 gallon, 2 ocellaris clowns, 1 clown goby, 3 scarlet hermits, 3 blue hermits, 1 astrea (possibly 1 emerald but im almost 100% certain its dead).

Im making a trip to the not so local LFS tomorrow, and was thinking something along the lines of 2 astreas + 1 or 2 emeralds. I've just been hearing such bad things about the emeralds, are there alternatives?

Thanks

 

[Jakers88]

Hi guys,

I wanted to add to my CUC. I've been off at school away from the tanks for a while, and some old members of the CUC died, and there is a brownish/red slime algae (new), hair algae, and bubble algae problem. I'm wondering what the best CUC additions would be to tackle these. Tank is a 10 gallon, 2 ocellaris clowns, 1 clown goby, 3 scarlet hermits, 3 blue hermits, 1 astrea (possibly 1 emerald but im almost 100% certain its dead).

Im making a trip to the not so local LFS tomorrow, and was thinking something along the lines of 2 astreas + 1 or 2 emeralds. I've just been hearing such bad things about the emeralds, are there alternatives?

Thanks

How did the emeralds work out? I'm thinking of getting one as well.

Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

 

[ReefWreak]

For reference, I have a big bubble algae problem, and added 4 emeralds, and haven't really noticed much of a difference. Maybe I already have too much bubble algea (I've been scraping and siphoning it out manually), but I do see the emeralds eating it, they just can't eat enough of it to make a dent.

For the OP's tank, probably 2 astrea snails total should be good (I started my tank with I think 5 or 6, and I believe I still have them to this day). You should be good on hermits, but I don't really like them because they'll kill snails for their shells.

For a 10g tank, there aren't a lot of alternatives, as I think an urchin will probably starve over the longer term, as will most clean up crew members. You could get an urchin, let it clean, and then return it to the LFS when done, but that's a lot of effort.

Managing algae in a nano is supremely difficult IMO. For most small algaes snails are your best bet, but for anything more than that, it's manual and chemical removal unfortunately.

 

[bcb577]

I had a 10 gallon up and running for two years and never had an algae issue at all.i ran a hob filter and a basic smaller cuc consisting of 2 mexican turbos, and 2 trochus snails,.the most important part of the 10 gallon is atleast a 20% WEEKLY water change and I mean do it every week religeously,i also at one point ran a Coralife nano protien skimmer which actually ended up being over kill.But I honestly never had any algae issues,it was my first saltwater aquarium, and I had people tell me how hard it would be and although it did require me to keep it clean,it wasnt hard at all.i recently moved everything to my 14 biocube that I had sitting for months.If your not afraid of maintenance go for it.