Quarantine and Lighting Questions

[aieong19]

Hi all,

I am starting a 90 gallon fish only tank with live rock. So far the sands and live rocks are already in the tank and I'm waiting for the water to finish cycling.

My plan once the tank complete the cycle is to add cleaning crew, such as hermit crabs and snails, as the first step.
So my question is do I need to quarantine the cleaning crew? I have planned to set up a quarantine tank for all incoming fishes and invertebrates, sush as shrimps or even hardy corals if I ever decided to keep some. But do the cleaning crews need to be quarantine?

My other question is about lighting.
I have read on some book that says the lighting period does not necessary needs to follow real time. Is that true?
For example, for viewing pleasure or maybe even to create a more convenient feeding schedule, the book says I can actually keep the lights on for, let say, 12pm to 12am for a 12 hours period instead of a more real life schedule, such as 8am to 8 pm, and it will not affect the health of the fishes as long as I keep the schedule constant.
Is that true? Can I do that?

Any comment is welcome. Thanks in advances.

 

[flipcyd]

You don't need to quarantine the cleanup crew or the shrimp. Inverts are sensitive to copper based med, it could kill them.

Lighting schedule doesn't matter too much for a fowlr. If you get into a reef then it starts getting important. However if your tank gets a lot of ambient light and you run your light for long period of time you might run into algae issues.

 

[crvz]

Agreed with flip, the clean up crew doest need to be QTed, I've never done it. If everything is setup, it would be fine to do it, but there's not a big demand to do so. And the lighting timing can be done as you've read, whenever is most enjoyable for you. A 12 hour photoperiod may actually be too much for some corals depending on the setup, but whatever you have it shifted to shouldnt matter.

 

[aieong19]

Hey thanks a lot for the comments so far!

I guess I will go ahead and add the cleaners straight to the tank when I'm sure the tank is ready then. And thanks for the reminder that inverts can't take copper!

Also, while we are on the topic of cleaners, I'll risk sneaking another question here if you guys don't mind.

My LFS have this suggestion package for cleaners, just want to see what you guys think about it.

For a 70~90 gallon tank:
60 - Blue Legged Hermits
10 - Red Scarlet Hermit
20 - Astrea Snails
20 - Margarita Snails
20 - Cerith Snails

While I like the idea of the variety, that looks a bit too much cleaners for me and its pretty expensive for so much of them even with the discount for the package. What do you guys think?
Should I just get a small package?

Such as this:
For 50~60 tank:
45 - Blue Legged Hermits
6 - Red Scarlet Hermit
15 - Astrea Snails
15 - Margarita Snails
15 - Cerith Snails

Are these enough?
I have only kept blue legged hermit as cleaners before. Do those suggested animals get along well anyways?

 

[Vauche]

As a personal opinion I would scrap the crabs and just do snails. Again some really like crabs but they can and will go after your snails. It may be possible to minimize this by adding empty shells for the crabs to use as they grow, but no guarantees that they will use those. So if you like them go for it but I wouldn't do 50+ crabs.
Secondly, I might also forget about the Margarita snails, they are not tropical snails. I have them, I like them, they do a good job, but I didn't listen to the advice and now after about 1-2 months they are starting to die. My understanding now is that they slowly "cook" in tropical water temperature.
Also, most like nassarius vibex snails, great for ditritus and keeping sand bed mixed up. As your tank is still cycling you probably do not need these yet.
Some suggest buying cleaning crew in stages, go low in numbers and increase as you see your crew unable to keep up. Also keeps costs down.

Hope this helps

 

[crvz]

vauche has some good input on the staggering additions of the clean up crew. and while it may not keep costs down, it does spread them out. I also don't care for crabs much, I'd probably just do 15 astreas and 10 ceriths to start, then go from there as the tank matures.

 

[aieong19]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13222930#post13222930 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Vauche
As a personal opinion I would scrap the crabs and just do snails. Again some really like crabs but they can and will go after your snails. It may be possible to minimize this by adding empty shells for the crabs to use as they grow, but no guarantees that they will use those. So if you like them go for it but I wouldn't do 50+ crabs.
Secondly, I might also forget about the Margarita snails, they are not tropical snails. I have them, I like them, they do a good job, but I didn't listen to the advice and now after about 1-2 months they are starting to die. My understanding now is that they slowly "cook" in tropical water temperature.
Also, most like nassarius vibex snails, great for ditritus and keeping sand bed mixed up. As your tank is still cycling you probably do not need these yet.
Some suggest buying cleaning crew in stages, go low in numbers and increase as you see your crew unable to keep up. Also keeps costs down.

Hope this helps

Thanks a lot for the detail information. Much appreciated!
Adding cleaners in stages sounds good too and I'll do that.

 

[aieong19]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13224382#post13224382 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by crvz
vauche has some good input on the staggering additions of the clean up crew. and while it may not keep costs down, it does spread them out. I also don't care for crabs much, I'd probably just do 15 astreas and 10 ceriths to start, then go from there as the tank matures.

Thanks for the suggestion!
I might just go with that since I have never kept snails before and want to give it a try.

 

[djm2221]

if you decide to get crabs, get the smallest blue leggers you can find, they seem to be a little less aggressive