Good CUC for 13 gallon reef?

[bmarine]

I have a 13 gallon globe reef. Right now, for inverts, I have:
1 pistol shrimp
2 Emerald Crabs
2 blue leg hermit crabs
3 other unknown snails.

Is this a large enough cleanup crew for this tank? Anything I should add? I'm also having a problem with green hair algae. Anything good to use to fight it?

 

[peasofme]

just a heads up. my 1" emerald crab just ate my 1" gold coral banded shrimp. the best cuc is you. feed less food and manually remove algae.

 

[cloak]

the best cuc is you.

+1

For that size tank I would probably go with one Banded Trochus snail and maybe one Scarlet hermit crab. Use something like a Mag-Float to clean the glass and stir up the sand bed once every month or so right before a water change. Piece of cake.
This is all under the impression that you are in fact using a decent water source though. GL.

 

[SteveVai9708]

You don't need a clean up crew, all they do is cover up a symptom such as high nitrates which would be caused by overfeeding. Get an invert because you truly want it. With that being said I recommend pairing the pistol with a goby, an emerald crab, hermits, coral banded shrimp and cleaner shrimp(highly recommend cleaner shrimp). The cleaner doesn't really have a purpose I'm the tank, but they are interactive. Other than that, I am mostly basing on whats cool to watch, but they are very useful as well. Also if you get like 12 snails and a couple of crabs they will eventually die to lack of food which will lead to more nitrates causing more algae. Honestly I think you have enough inverts, test your water. Gl with the nano. I miss my nano, you don't get the same experience with a 55g and up tank.

 

[bmarine]

Great, thanks guys! Sounds like I will keep doing what I am doing then. Wasn't sure if there was anything I really should add or not. Any good way to get rid of green hair algae? Lights are on from noon to 9 PM with an hour ramp time, and all the levels look good except for my pH being pretty low, at about 7.4.

 

[sam.basye]

I wouldn't use more than 7 hours of light. Especially on a tank that small as algae can get out of control. My tank is 26 gal and the lights ramp up at 2pm and turn off at 11pm. So there is about a 6 hour photo period for the corals. The lights peak around 6pm.

Pistol shrimp are a great addition, but don't serve any purpose as part of a CUC.