1. inverts don't have to be acclimated.
WRONG. They're touchier than many fish, because their shells don't allow them to 'sweat'. Give them about 30 min of slow adjustment of salinity. A refractometer can tell you accurately how soon you can put them across. A .001 difference is good enough, for them, or for most fish. Creatures can actually die while waiting in the limited bag: so the minute that bag is opened (starting a chemical reaction involving ph) test the bag water with the refractometer. Then test the tank, being careful to wipe the instrument off. If you are bang-on, go right ahead and transfer the invert to your tank: I do recommend an intermediate swish in clean tank water, just for comfort---hoping to dislodge any ich parasites that may be traveling in the bag water.
2. snails and hermits don't have a long lifespan.
WRONG: Don't buy cold-water snails (margaritas and some varieties of turbos) who don't survive long above 75 degrees. Buy astraeas and ceriths, and plan to 'flip' rock dwelling snails upright with a chopstick and move them back to rock or glass if you see them on the sand: they're just don't good at sand. Outside of that, if properly acclimated, and if hermits are supplied some very small shells (free or nearly so from your lfs, if you ask) you will not lose cleanup crew. Mine are all with me heading into the 5th year, and if I hadn't moved 5 years ago, we'd still have the originals from 7 years ago. (They went back to the lfs in the move.) Buy scarlets and micro blue-legs among the hermits: they're good citizens. You'll occasionally see them walk on a specimen, but they're very light and they don't hurt it.
3. Worms are bad.
WRONG: bristleworms are your friends. Just don't handle them. Their bristle have hooks which mate-up with the ridges on your fingers, and neither you nor the worm will be happy. If a fish should get a few bristles, harmless: they fall off after a couple of days; but the advantage to the fish in having worms about is life-saving. Worms can clean inside rocks. This is a good thing. Worms don't have biting mouths: worms suck. That's all they can do. They suck slime and liquified things. Since live fish and corals don't fall into the slime category, they're not on the menu. On the other hand, I believe that the survival of one of my corals which suffered an injury is due to the worms which constantly cleaned the 'bad' edge and let it heal over. It survived, and 5 years later is doing nicely.
4. Shrimp are good.
WRONG: some shrimp are fun; but many are royal pests. Peppermints will eat baby aiptasia and prevent their spread, but may not touch the adults, and they will occasonally bother corals. Coral-bandeds may have a taste for smaller fish, live ones; and cleaner shrimp may be so enthusiastic they over-do it in a small tank, and actually irritate the fish who too frequently receive their attention. Bumblebee shrimp are interesting, but bother your urchins. Harlequins have no bad habits that I know of, but are small and fragile.
5. crabs are good.
MOSTLY WRONG: emeralds are about the only one that don't harm anything; arrow crabs, while interesting, eat all your worms, and then don't help the tank much; hitchhikers are generally very bad; sally lightfoots are not good either, and grow to be the size of dinner plates.
6. urchins are good.
WITH RESERVATIONS: great algae cleaners, but if you like the way your rocks are setting, glue them before admitting one of these creatures. They also grow fast and get worse about moving rock and knocking things over.
7. starfish are fun
MOSTLY WRONG, FOR THE STARFISH OR YOUR SPECIMENS
leave them in the ocean. Brittle stars of the black/white/brown sort are good cleaners, a lot like worms. Green ones are tagged as fish-eaters. The red/blue linckia stars and basket stars are very hard to keep in anything under 200 gallons with a lot of rock; and impossible to keep in small tanks, where they starve. Big classic stars are reef predators. No way.
8. Exotics are fun
REALLY WRONG: they'll probably die in a new tank, and if they don't, they'll find something to eat you won't approve of, and a large fleshy dead thing is beyond the ability of a new tank to absorb, especially if it dies under the rockwork. Stick to the simple list: snails and hermits and bristleworms.
9. My CUC will restore my new tank to the white dead sterility it had before it cycled.
WRONG: your tank will never look that way again, nor should it. It will always be a little brown, green, yellow, and pink, just like the ocean. Bringing it ALIVE is what cycling was all about. Your CUC will not get rid of hair algae: that stuff grows from phosphate fertilizer, from spores that fall in from the air you breathe. You will see cycles of hair, of film, of green bubble, of various things; whenever you add a new rock or a cup of new sand it will get hair, etc. The spores are always there, and forget the fantasy that your CUC will save you: no. It's just the bottom tier of a circle of life...it cleans up dead things, cleans up too much food. What brings a tank to that fantasy-land perfection of the photos we offer as Tank of the Month? TIME. Time and good water-keeping. Phosphate comes in with rock, sand, fishfood, and tap-water that hasn't been ro/di filtered. Getting it out is a constant battle. A fuge helps. And eventually you have the preferred algae (pink coralline) instead of the hairy sort. But you'll always have algae. You just fight to get better algae. Don't buy things to 'eat' whatever's annoying you unless it fits into your tank's population nicely: just try to balance your tank, and avoid putting in more phosphate---ie, use ro/di. You can scrape, pick, age, do whatever you want, and have a hundred algae eaters at work, and you will only get to TOTM by cleaning up your water. A good skimmer; regular water changes with ro/di; a good salt mix; and elimination of phosphate are the one true way to a really good tank. A note: never mind getting a phosphate test. If you have algae, you HAVE phosphate, and the test won't read what the algae's holding. If you don't have algae, you don't need to test for phosphate either. So save the money and spend it on a ro/di filter.
WRONG. They're touchier than many fish, because their shells don't allow them to 'sweat'. Give them about 30 min of slow adjustment of salinity. A refractometer can tell you accurately how soon you can put them across. A .001 difference is good enough, for them, or for most fish. Creatures can actually die while waiting in the limited bag: so the minute that bag is opened (starting a chemical reaction involving ph) test the bag water with the refractometer. Then test the tank, being careful to wipe the instrument off. If you are bang-on, go right ahead and transfer the invert to your tank: I do recommend an intermediate swish in clean tank water, just for comfort---hoping to dislodge any ich parasites that may be traveling in the bag water.
2. snails and hermits don't have a long lifespan.
WRONG: Don't buy cold-water snails (margaritas and some varieties of turbos) who don't survive long above 75 degrees. Buy astraeas and ceriths, and plan to 'flip' rock dwelling snails upright with a chopstick and move them back to rock or glass if you see them on the sand: they're just don't good at sand. Outside of that, if properly acclimated, and if hermits are supplied some very small shells (free or nearly so from your lfs, if you ask) you will not lose cleanup crew. Mine are all with me heading into the 5th year, and if I hadn't moved 5 years ago, we'd still have the originals from 7 years ago. (They went back to the lfs in the move.) Buy scarlets and micro blue-legs among the hermits: they're good citizens. You'll occasionally see them walk on a specimen, but they're very light and they don't hurt it.
3. Worms are bad.
WRONG: bristleworms are your friends. Just don't handle them. Their bristle have hooks which mate-up with the ridges on your fingers, and neither you nor the worm will be happy. If a fish should get a few bristles, harmless: they fall off after a couple of days; but the advantage to the fish in having worms about is life-saving. Worms can clean inside rocks. This is a good thing. Worms don't have biting mouths: worms suck. That's all they can do. They suck slime and liquified things. Since live fish and corals don't fall into the slime category, they're not on the menu. On the other hand, I believe that the survival of one of my corals which suffered an injury is due to the worms which constantly cleaned the 'bad' edge and let it heal over. It survived, and 5 years later is doing nicely.
4. Shrimp are good.
WRONG: some shrimp are fun; but many are royal pests. Peppermints will eat baby aiptasia and prevent their spread, but may not touch the adults, and they will occasonally bother corals. Coral-bandeds may have a taste for smaller fish, live ones; and cleaner shrimp may be so enthusiastic they over-do it in a small tank, and actually irritate the fish who too frequently receive their attention. Bumblebee shrimp are interesting, but bother your urchins. Harlequins have no bad habits that I know of, but are small and fragile.
5. crabs are good.
MOSTLY WRONG: emeralds are about the only one that don't harm anything; arrow crabs, while interesting, eat all your worms, and then don't help the tank much; hitchhikers are generally very bad; sally lightfoots are not good either, and grow to be the size of dinner plates.
6. urchins are good.
WITH RESERVATIONS: great algae cleaners, but if you like the way your rocks are setting, glue them before admitting one of these creatures. They also grow fast and get worse about moving rock and knocking things over.
7. starfish are fun
MOSTLY WRONG, FOR THE STARFISH OR YOUR SPECIMENS
leave them in the ocean. Brittle stars of the black/white/brown sort are good cleaners, a lot like worms. Green ones are tagged as fish-eaters. The red/blue linckia stars and basket stars are very hard to keep in anything under 200 gallons with a lot of rock; and impossible to keep in small tanks, where they starve. Big classic stars are reef predators. No way.
8. Exotics are fun
REALLY WRONG: they'll probably die in a new tank, and if they don't, they'll find something to eat you won't approve of, and a large fleshy dead thing is beyond the ability of a new tank to absorb, especially if it dies under the rockwork. Stick to the simple list: snails and hermits and bristleworms.
9. My CUC will restore my new tank to the white dead sterility it had before it cycled.
WRONG: your tank will never look that way again, nor should it. It will always be a little brown, green, yellow, and pink, just like the ocean. Bringing it ALIVE is what cycling was all about. Your CUC will not get rid of hair algae: that stuff grows from phosphate fertilizer, from spores that fall in from the air you breathe. You will see cycles of hair, of film, of green bubble, of various things; whenever you add a new rock or a cup of new sand it will get hair, etc. The spores are always there, and forget the fantasy that your CUC will save you: no. It's just the bottom tier of a circle of life...it cleans up dead things, cleans up too much food. What brings a tank to that fantasy-land perfection of the photos we offer as Tank of the Month? TIME. Time and good water-keeping. Phosphate comes in with rock, sand, fishfood, and tap-water that hasn't been ro/di filtered. Getting it out is a constant battle. A fuge helps. And eventually you have the preferred algae (pink coralline) instead of the hairy sort. But you'll always have algae. You just fight to get better algae. Don't buy things to 'eat' whatever's annoying you unless it fits into your tank's population nicely: just try to balance your tank, and avoid putting in more phosphate---ie, use ro/di. You can scrape, pick, age, do whatever you want, and have a hundred algae eaters at work, and you will only get to TOTM by cleaning up your water. A good skimmer; regular water changes with ro/di; a good salt mix; and elimination of phosphate are the one true way to a really good tank. A note: never mind getting a phosphate test. If you have algae, you HAVE phosphate, and the test won't read what the algae's holding. If you don't have algae, you don't need to test for phosphate either. So save the money and spend it on a ro/di filter.
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I believe that people are going down the wrong road with CUCs that has been ingrained in the industry for some reason. People just need to research more and not just do whatever is recommended by the LFS or people pushing the "Norm" CUC on them.
